iostream

I understand that a stream is a representation of a sequence of bytes. Each stream provides means for reading and writing bytes to its given backing store. But what is the point of the stream? Why isn't the backing store itself what we interact with? For whatever reason this concept just isn't clicking for me. I've read a bunch of articles, but I think I need an analogy or something. The word "stream" has been chosen because it represents (in real life) a very similar meaning to what we want to convey when we use it. Let's forget about the backing store for a little, and start thinking about

I would like to read some data from a stream I have using std::getline . Below a sample using the std::cin . std::string line; std::getline( std::cin, line ); This is a blocking function i.e. if there is no data or line to read it blocks execution. Do you know if exists a function for checking data availability before calling std::getline ? I don't want to block. How can I check whether the stream buffer is full of data valid for a successful call to std::getline ? Whatever looks like the code below if( dataAvailableInStream() ) { std::string line; std::getline( std::cin, line ); } The

I have a function that takes an ostream reference as an argument, writes some data to the stream, and then returns a reference to that same stream, like so: #include <iostream> std::ostream& print( std::ostream& os ) { os << " How are you?" << std::endl; return os; } int main() { std::cout << "Hello, world!" << print( std::cout ) << std::endl; } The output of this code is: How are you? Hello, world!0x601288 However, if I separate the chaining expressions into two statements, like this int main() { std::cout << "Hello, world!"; std::cout << print( std::cout ) << std::endl; } then I at least get

When including a header file in C++, what's the difference between... 1) including the .h versus not including the .h when wrapping it in < > signs? #include <iostream> vs. #include <iostream.h> 2) wrapping the header name in double quotes versus wrapping it in < > signs? #include <iostream.h> vs. #include "iostream.h" Thanks in advance! Adam Davis In short: iostream.h is deprecated - it is the original Stroustrup version, and iostream is the version from the standards committee. Generally compilers point them both to the same thing, but some older compilers won't have the older one. In some