cout << with char* argument prints string, not pointer value

Question

This:

const char * terry = \"hello\";
cout<

prints hello instead of the memory address of the \'h\'.

Answer 1

std::cout is defined as std::ostream with this definition of operator<<.

Notably this line:

template< class CharT, class Traits >
basic_ostream& operator<<( basic_ostream& os,
                                     const char* s );

This gets selected when you use << with an argument of type char*.

The case of any other non-char pointer type goes here:

basic_ostream& operator<<( const void* value );

This continues to std::num_put which is made for formatting numeric values. Therefore, the pointer is interepreted numerically like %p in C formatting functions.