Check if ostream object is cout or ofstream, c++

Question

Is there a way in C++ to check if an ostream object is cout or a ofstream object?

Something like:

ostream& ou         


        

Answer 1

You will definitely get further by checking the streambuffer identity

if (s.rdbuf() == std::cout.rdbuf())

This is because it is trivially simple to cross-assign / alias streams to buffers, see http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/iostream/ios/rdbuf/ and the Josuttis book