What's the difference between cout<<cout and cout<<&cout in c++?

Question

This might be a beginner question and understanding how cout works is probably key here. If somebody could link to a good explanation, it would be great. cout<

Answer 1

As already stated, cout << cout uses the void* conversion provided for bool testing (while (some_stream){ ... }, etc.)

It prints the value &cout + 4 because the conversion is done in the base implementation, and casts to its own type, this is from libstdc++:

operator void*() const
{ return this->fail() ? 0 : const_cast(this); }