no

There isn't? That seems kinda not cool. Brings to mind the fact that Allegro makes cin unusable but offers no replacement...

Well I don't see what std::cin has to do with text output.

And std::cout still works, it outputs data to the console if one is available, otherwise the output is hidden. as with std::cin, it should read from the console, but if is a blocking function, so your game will pause while it gets input.

I am off to check that... -Tim

Edit: It definitely applies to linux, buggering off to windows to test mingw
Edit2: It works fine under windows too.

Under both it spawns a console when you call std::cin.

A way to implement Edgar Reynaldo's idea could be.

You could scan the string, when you find a newline, replace it with '\0', output the string, move your pointer to the character after the newline, move down 10 pixels (with the default font) and repeat til you reach the '\0'. Then run back along the string putting back all the newlines.

If you complain enough, someone will implement it for you, as its quite trivial. If I get bored later, I might even bother.

-Tim

There's absolutely no way you can justify not using the text_height function though.

Just a little warning on Timorg's version: It's extremely efficient but you had better document on your function that it modifies the string it received as input.
(If you pass static data that is normally in 'const' area, a touchy OS or a memory protector is allowed to complain. loudly.)

I got bored, and as with what Audric was saying, this code isn't thread safe, if you try to use the string elsewhere at the same time, you will get strange things happening.

As for the other part of what Audric suggested, if your using STL strings, and call std::string.c_str() and pass it to the function, it depends on the implementation of STL to what will happen. Could be fine or yet again strange things might happen.

Thomas Harte: I didn't mention text_height function, cause I was trying to keep the example simple.

-------------

Edit:

I got bored again, here is a c++ implementation that uses std::string

This is thread safe, and you can pass a null terminated string into it and it will work fine.

If you guys keep going, you'll come up with textprintf_ex() !

You don't need to scan the string manually for newlines. strchr is your friend:

After fixing the errors in Kitty Cat's code. ie. removing the redundant 'i' variable, and changing the return value to void. I then made an optimization, where I removed one of the if statements.

I then made a version of my code where it duplicates the string, before messing with it, so that I wouldn't have to put all the '\n's in the right place.

I then stripped out the allegro stuff, and made a program that calls each function 10000000 times.

I then profiled the program and got the following results.

  %   cumulative   self              self     total           
 time   seconds   seconds    calls  ns/call  ns/call  name    
 58.79      9.67     9.67 10000000   967.05   967.05  textout_ml_ex0
 32.83     15.07     5.40 10000000   540.03   540.03  textout_ml_ex1
  3.83     15.70     0.63 10000000    63.00    63.00  my_textout0
  2.61     16.13     0.43 10000000    43.00    43.00  my_textout1
  1.95     16.45     0.32                             main

As you can see Kitty Cat's function is much more efficent than mine, its actual 15 times faster than my original code.

Then if you optimize it (-O1) the difference is even more pronounced

Each sample counts as 0.01 seconds.
  %   cumulative   self              self     total           
 time   seconds   seconds    calls  ns/call  ns/call  name    
 62.63      4.44     4.44 10000000   444.02   444.02  textout_ml_ex0
 31.31      6.66     2.22 10000000   222.01   222.01  textout_ml_ex1
  2.19      6.82     0.16 10000000    15.50    15.50  my_textout0
  2.05      6.96     0.15 10000000    14.50    14.50  my_textout1
  1.83      7.09     0.13                             main

Which brings me to the final conclusion...

If you want multi-line text output use Kitty Cat's code (after you modify it so that it will actually compile without errors.

-Tim

I was saying that if the only reason you wanted text input was to get the player's name, that would be a lot of code to do it with. It's worth it if you're actually using a lot of text input, but it's just too much if you only use it once, which is about how much I would use it in a game.

I know, that's the problem. Allegro include functions to replace (and vastly improve upon) cout, but completely ignores the need for input. I'm going to use the mind control routines in Allegro 5 to make someone put input routines in Allegro 6.