Sams Teach Yourself C++ in One Hour a Day, 9th Edition

Lesson 27

Using Streams for Input and Output

You have actually been using streams all through this book, starting with Lesson 1, “Getting Started,” in which you displayed “Hello World” on the screen by using std::cout. It’s time to give this part of C++ its due attention and examine streams from a practical point of view.

In this lesson, you find out

• ■   What streams are and how they are used

• ■   How to write to and read from files by using streams

• ■   Useful C++ stream operations

The Concept of Streams

Say that you are developing a program that reads from the disk, writes data to the display, reads user input from the keyboard, and saves data on the disk. Wouldn’t it be useful if you could treat all read activities and write activities using ...