std::cout, std::wcout

From cppreference.com

Defined in header `<iostream>`

extern std::ostream cout;	(1)

extern std::wostream wcout;	(2)

The global objects std::cout and std::wcout control output to a stream buffer of implementation-defined type (derived from std::streambuf), associated with the standard C output stream stdout.

These objects are guaranteed to be constructed before the first constructor of a static object is called and they are guaranteed to outlive the last destructor of a static object, so that it is always possible to write to std::cout in user code.

Unless sync_with_stdio(false) has been issued, it is safe to concurrently access these objects from multiple threads for both formatted and unformatted output.

Once initialized, std::cout is tie()'d to std::cin and std::wcout is tie()'d to std::wcin, meaning that any input operation on std::cin executes std::cout.flush() (via std::basic_istream::sentry's constructor).

Once initialized, std::cout is also tie()'d to std::cerr and std::wcout is tie()'d to std::wcerr, meaning that any output operation on std::cerr executes std::cout.flush() (via std::basic_ostream::sentry's constructor) (since C++11)

[edit] Example

run this code

#include <iostream>
struct Foo {
    int n;
    Foo() {
       std::cout << "static constructor\n";
    }
    ~Foo() {
       std::cout << "static destructor\n";
    }
};
Foo f; // static object
int main()
{
    std::cout << "main function\n";
}

Output:

static constructor
main function
static destructor

[edit] See also


Init	initializes standard stream objects (public member class of `std::ios_base`)

clog wclog	writes to the standard C error stream stderr (global object)

cout wcout	writes to the standard C output stream stdout (global object)

Language
Standard library headers
Concepts
Utilities library
Strings library
Containers library
Algorithms library
Iterators library
Numerics library
Input/output library
Localizations library
Regular expressions library (C++11)
Atomic operations library (C++11)
Thread support library (C++11)