This project features a collection of functions I ended up needing in various C++ software projects. Many of them originate from the first larger project I wrote, which was a text adventure I may eventually upload too. Their functionality can of course also be found in other libraries, but I just don't want to include a massive overhead when I really only need one or two methods.
I also tried to keep the code cross-plattform, which means it should be compilable on most Linux distributions. That being said, this is my first attempt trying to write C++ that runs on other OSs than Windows, so don't expect flawless, bug-free code. It took me quite a while to figure things out, but I guess it was kinda fun. Maybe someone else than me can make use of this or learn something along the way.
void ChangeColor(Color color);A word on terminals and colors: Using the windows command prompt, there is a set of color codes that can be set directly as either background or foreground. Other terminals can be manipulated using ANSI escape sequences in order to change color or text formatting - but the interpretation of these codes varies. This library defines enum class Color whose members can be used instead of plain color codes. If you need advanced control on your terminal and you want your software to work reliably on any system, take a look at one of the implementations of curses.
void PrintError(std::string error);I had the desire to display a customly formatted error message.
void Wait();Waits until an arbitrary key is being pressed. On Windows _getch() in conio.h does the job. On Linux, this was a pain in the butt using only standard libraries, because the terminal has to be reconfigured in order to disable getchar()'s echo and waiting for a new line character.
void ClearTerminal();Clears the terminal - easy using an ANSI escape code.
void SetTerminalTitle(std::string title);Sets the title of the terminal - also possible with escape sequences on non-windows terminals.
void PrepareTerminal(std::string programName, std::string version, std::string description = "");Clears the terminal and outputs the program's name, version and a description.
void PrintText(std::string text, unsigned int pause);Prints a text letter by letter with a given delay between the individual characters. Prints the text instantly as soon as 'q' has been pressed.
bool PathExists(std::string path);Checks whether a path exists in an OS-independant manner.
bool CreateDirectory(std::string path);Creates a directory and all its parent directories.
bool IsFile(std::string path);Checks whether a path points to a file or a directory.
int CountWords(std::string text);Counts the words within a string. Takes spaces and punctuation into account.
std::string GetJeinziDirectory();This function returns the path to the directory where I like to save my own application data. That is, on windows $AppData$/Roaming/Jeinzi/ and on Linux $home$/.Jeinzi. Btw I could go ballistic if some software decides to save its data in my main user directory on windows 😠
std::string ToLower(std::string text);Converts a string to lower case. Maybe I'll remove that function since it's really just a call to
transform(text.begin(), text.end(), text.begin(), ::tolower);std::string FirstToUpper(std::string text);Converts the first character of a string to upper case. Same game as ToLower(std::string).
std::string GetWord(std::string text, unsigned int index);Returns the word at the given index within the string. Pays attention to punctuation marks, of course.
std::string IntToHexString(int number);Converts an integer into a hex formatted string. I really couldn't find a method for that.
...Yeah, well, I guess I could have used C-style printf() if I really didn't want to write my own function.
std::string EscapeURL(std::string text);Escapes a string for use in an URL - reserved characters are converted in the corresponding hex escape sequence. Needed that when I was writing an image crawler for 4chan/wg using cURL.
std::string GetComputerName();Yeah. Returns the computer's name.
std::string GetUserName();This was a bit confusing on Linux, at first.
std::string GetFileFormat(std::string path);Really just searches through the string backwards until the first dot is reached and returns everything thereafter. If no dot is found, an empty string is returned.
std::string GetFileName(std::string path);Returns everything after the last (back-)slash or the parameter itself, if there is no such character within it.