C++ Primer Plus

The Other ostream Methods

Besides the various operator<<() functions, the ostream class provides the put() method for displaying characters and the write() method for displaying strings.

Originally, the put() method had the following prototype:

ostream & put(char);

The current standard is equivalent, except it’s templated to allow for wchar_t. You invoke it by using the usual class method notation:

cout.put('W');      // display the W character

Here cout is the invoking object and put() is the class member function. Like the << operator functions, this function returns a reference to the invoking object, so you can concatenate output with it:

cout.put('I').put('t'); // displaying It with two put() calls

The function call cout.put('I') returns ...