The basic idea here is to use a protected virtual function that takes a string as the error/log/debug-message to be printed / logged. Then, your base class exposes a non-virtual function (or set of functions) to construct the string that will be fed to the protected virtual function. To actually create the string, you can use one of many ways, in the style of printf (with varargs or variadic templates (C++11)), or in the style of standard iostreams. Here is one solution in the latter category:
class BaseDebugOutput {
protected:
virtual void printMessage(const std::string& aMsg) = 0;
private:
std::stringstream temp_stream;
public:
virtual ~BaseDebugOutput() { };
// One << operator for any type.
template <typename T>
BaseDebugOutput& operator<<(const T& value) {
temp_stream << value;
return *this;
};
typedef std::basic_ostream< std::stringstream::char_type,
std::stringstream::traits_type >&
(*ostream_function_ptr)(
std::basic_ostream< std::stringstream::char_type,
std::stringstream::traits_type >&);
// One << operator for things like std::endl.
BaseDebugOutput& operator<<(ostream_function_ptr p) {
if(p == ostream_function_ptr(std::endl)) {
// if the user outputted an end-line, then print the entry:
temp_stream << std::endl;
std::string temp_msg;
std::getline(temp_stream,temp_msg);
// call the protected virtual function:
printMessage(temp_msg);
} else {
temp_stream << p;
};
return *this;
};
};
An example derived class would be:
class CErrDebugOutput : public BaseDebugOutput {
protected:
virtual void printMessage(const std::string& aMsg) {
std::cerr << "Error reported with message: '" << aMsg << "'." << std::endl;
};
};
And the use-case would look like this:
int main() {
BaseDebugOutput* debug_output = new CErrDebugOutput;
(*debug_output) << "The answer is: " << 42 << "!" << std::endl;
delete debug_output;
return;
};
One advantage of the above setup is that you can insert almost anything you want in addition to the error message, such as a time-stamp for example, or just adding the "Error: " string or whatever so that you don't have to repeat that all the time at the points where you issue the messages (call-site).