Characters on the heap

[ForTheReallys]

So I'm doing a bit of experimenting to see just how memory is arranged on the heap. However, when I allocate single characters on the heap, and try to view their address, I get strange characters. Here's my code:

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    char *first = new char;
    char *second = new char;
    cout << "First is located on the heap at " << first << endl;
    cout << "Second is located on the heap at" << second << endl;
    return 0;
}

[Disch]

ostream's << operator treats char pointers special. It doesn't print the address, but rather assumes the address points to string data and tries to print it.

It's what makes this possible:

const char* foo = "a string";
cout << foo; // <- prints "a string" and not the actual pointer 

If you want to print the address, you'll have to cast to a different pointer type... like void*:

cout << "First is located on the heap at " << (void*)first << endl;

[ForTheReallys]

OK that makes sense. Thanks!