C++ iostream Library - cout Object

Description

The object of class ostream that represents the standard output stream oriented to narrow characters (of type char). It corresponds to the C stream stdout. The standard output stream is the default destination of characters determined by the environment. This destination may be shared with more standard objects (such as cerr or clog).

Object of class ostream, characters can be written to it either as formatted data using the insertion operator (operator<<) or as unformatted data, using member functions such as write.

Declaration

Following is the declaration for std::cout.

extern ostream cout;

cout is not tied to any other output stream.

A program should not mix output operations on cout with output operations on wcout (or with other wide-oriented output operations on stdout): Once an output operation has been performed on either, the standard output stream acquires an orientation (either narrow or wide) that can only be safely changed by calling freopen on stdout.