13Demystifying C++ I/O
A program's fundamental job is to accept input and produce output. A program that produces no output of any sort would not be very useful. All languages provide some mechanism for I/O, either as a built-in part of the language or through an OS-specific API. A good I/O system is both flexible and easy to use. Flexible I/O systems support input and output through a variety of devices, such as files and the user console. Files could be standard files but could also be data coming from a variety of sources such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, web services, and more. It could be weather data from a weather device or stock values from a stockbroker web service. Flexible I/O systems also support reading and writing of different types of data. I/O is error-prone because data coming from a user can be incorrect or the underlying filesystem or other data source can be inaccessible. Thus, a good I/O system is also capable of handling error conditions.
If you are familiar with the C language, you have undoubtedly used printf ...
Get Professional C++, 6th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
