cout and cin are not functions, so what are they?

Question

Generally in C programming language We consider printf and scanf to be functions. when it comes to cout and cin, in C++ what are they?I mean they cant be functions as they are n

Answer 1

std::cout and std::cin are global objects of classes std::ostream and std::istream respectively, which they've overloaded operator << and >>. You should read about operator overloading.

   cout    <<      expr  ;
  ~~~~~~  ~~~~   ~~~~~~~~
  object   op.   argument 

It's like a function call; the function is an overloaded operator and a shortcut for this:

cout.operator<<(expr);

or this:

operator<<(cout, expr);

depending on the results of overload resolution