lcd.print then dataFile.print

Question

My program is a bit large and I'm worried about stability.

I need to print data to both a file and to my LCD. It's like this:

if (hour<10) {
    dataFile.print("0");
}
dataFile.print(hour, DEC);
dataFile.print(":");
if (minute<10) {
    dataFile.print("0");
}
dataFile.print(minute, DEC);
dataFile.print(":");
if (second<10) {
    dataFile.print("0");
}

Then

if (hour<10) {
    lcd.print("0");
}
lcd.print(hour, DEC);
lcd.print(":");
if (minute<10) {
    lcd.print("0");
}
lcd.print(minute, DEC);
lcd.print(":");
if (second<10) {
    lcd.print("0");
}

What is a smart way to make this shorter? Should I write a function to add the leading zero then another that does something like:

void printboth (thing) {
    dataFile.print(thing);
    lcd.print(thing);
}

good idea?

Answer 1

You could format the data with snprintf:

char timestamp[9];
snprintf(timestamp, 9, "%02d:%02d:%02d", hour, minute, second);
dataFile.print(timestamp);
lcd.print(timestamp);

%02d in the snprintf format means "print at least 2 digits of this value and pad with leading zeros".