const char pointer
When i use this code and print out
cout << *szString; it only prints the first letter but when i print cout << szString; the whole word prints i thought char means one character and not a whole word, and this cout << szString[2] seems to work as well when i haven't used brackets in my declaration?. Can someone explain this please.const char* szString = "Hello";
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Using cout<< on a pointer usually just outputs the memory address but char* is very often used for strings so for that reason it has been overloaded to print the whole string. If this wasn't the case even things like
cout << "Hello"; would not work.
Overloaded functions are a number of functions (or operators) with the same name but with different parameter types.
The operator<< that is normally used on pointers is operator<<(const void*) (because any pointer can be implicit converted into a void*) but there is also an operator<<(const char*) that will be used instead when passing a char*.
operator<<(const void*) prints the memory address that the pointer points to.
operator<<(const char*) assumes the pointer points to the first character in a string and therefore it prints all characters in the string until it finds the null termination character '\0' that marks the end of the string.
The operator<< that is normally used on pointers is operator<<(const void*) (because any pointer can be implicit converted into a void*) but there is also an operator<<(const char*) that will be used instead when passing a char*.
operator<<(const void*) prints the memory address that the pointer points to.
operator<<(const char*) assumes the pointer points to the first character in a string and therefore it prints all characters in the string until it finds the null termination character '\0' that marks the end of the string.
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