| When a program inserts or extracts values other than single characters, such as integers or floating-point data, a number of different formatting options are available. |
| For instance, some applications might want to have an inserted unsigned int transmitted in decimal, while for other applications hexadecimal might be more appropriate. |
| A similar issue is whether white space should be skipped on input before storing or interpreting characters from a stream. |
| The member function setf() is provided to allow program control of such options. |
| For instance, the following expression sets the default for the stream cout to hexadecimal, so that integral values written to cout will ordinarily be transmitted in hexadecimal: |
| cout.setf(ios:hex, ios:basefield) |
| The streams library provides several similar functions: |
| width() |
| sets the number of characters to display. |
| fill() |
| defines the fill character when there are fewer characters to insert than the width. |
| precision() |
| sets the number of significant digits to write for floating-point values |