what does it mean "flushing the stream"

[hitmanben2]

i read in some book this "Note that \n is not quite the same as endl. endl will output a newline and flush the stream, while
\n will output the newline without flushing the stream."

what does it mean "flushing the stream"?

[zb0S216C]

It means forcing the contents of the output stream to the default output medium the OS uses (the console on Windows and the terminal on *nix). A stream is a buffer used to store I/O data. For instance, "std::cin" has a buffer to store input data whereas "std::cout's" buffer is used to store data that's going to be sent to screen.

In certain points in a program, the output stream is automatically flushed; flushing is not always necessary.

_Wazzak

[hitmanben2]

thank Framework

that explained it.