How can I repeat a string a variable number of times in C++?

Question

In the particular case of repeating a single character, you can use std::string(size_type count, CharT ch):

std::string(5, '.') + "lolcat"

This can't be used to repeat multi-character strings.

There's no direct idiomatic way to repeat strings in C++ equivalent to the * operator in Python or the x operator in Perl. If you're repeating a single character, the two-argument constructor (as suggested by previous answers) works well:

std::string(5, '.')

This is a contrived example of how you might use an ostringstream to repeat a string n times:

#include <sstream>

std::string repeat(int n) {
    std::ostringstream os;
    for(int i = 0; i < n; i++)
        os << "repeat";
    return os.str();
}

Depending on the implementation, this may be slightly more efficient than simply concatenating the string n times.

Use one of the forms of string::insert:

std::string str("lolcat");
str.insert(0, 5, '.');

This will insert "....." (five dots) at the start of the string (position 0).

I know this is an old question, but I was looking to do the same thing and have found what I think is a simpler solution. It appears that cout has this function built in with cout.fill(), see the link for a 'full' explanation

http://www.java-samples.com/showtutorial.php?tutorialid=458

cout.width(11);
cout.fill('.');
cout << "lolcat" << endl;

outputs

.....lolcat

For the purposes of the example provided by the OP std::string's ctor is sufficient: std::string(5, '.'). However, if anybody is looking for a function to repeat std::string multiple times:

std::string repeat(const std::string& input, unsigned num)
{
    std::string ret;
    ret.reserve(input.size() * num);
    while (num--)
        ret += input;
    return ret;
}

As Commodore Jaeger alluded to, I don't think any of the other answers actually answer this question; the question asks how to repeat a string, not a character.

While the answer given by Commodore is correct, it is quite inefficient. Here is a faster implementation, the idea is to minimise copying operations and memory allocations by first exponentially growing the string:

#include <string>
#include <cstddef>

std::string repeat(std::string str, const std::size_t n)
{
    if (n == 0) {
        str.clear();
        str.shrink_to_fit();
        return str;
    } else if (n == 1 || str.empty()) {
        return str;
    }
    const auto period = str.size();
    if (period == 1) {
        str.append(n - 1, str.front());
        return str;
    }
    str.reserve(period * n);
    std::size_t m {2};
    for (; m < n; m *= 2) str += str;
    str.append(str.c_str(), (n - (m / 2)) * period);
    return str;
}

We can also define an operator* to get something closer to the Python version:

#include <utility>

std::string operator*(std::string str, std::size_t n)
{
    return repeat(std::move(str), n);
}

On my machine this is around 10x faster than the implementation given by Commodore, and about 2x faster than a naive 'append n - 1 times' solution.