How to Print the Address of a char Pointer using cout in C ?

Printing Addresses with Char Pointers in C : Unveiling the Difference Between printf() and cout

When dealing with char pointers, the choice between outputting the address or the string content can be confusing. In the case of printf(), the decision is clear-cut based on the conversion specifier. However, when it comes to cout, the selection process is less obvious.

cout's Overloading Dilemma

In C , cout is an instance of the ostream class, which offers multiple overloaded versions of the operator<<. When printing a char pointer, the compiler must determine which overload to use. By default, cout will prioritize the overload meant for C-style strings, which prints the string content.

Force Address Printing with Cast

To override this behavior and print the address instead, a cast is necessary. The desired overload takes a void pointer as input. Therefore, you can use the following code:

cout << static_cast(cptr) << endl;

This cast explicitly converts the char pointer to a void pointer, forcing cout to use the appropriate overload. As a result, the address of ch will be printed.
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