Cin & Cout VS. Scanf & Printf

The title says it all, which should i use, which i shouldn't, or are there special circumstances. They use different libraries, does using one have benefits over the other? THe book I'm going through uses Cin & Cout, but loads of people online use the <stdio.h> library approach.

So which way is better? THank you for your replies.

If you're already using C++, then you'll probably find that cin and cout are a lot easier to use.

So then why doesn't everybody just use cin and cout if they're easier to use? Are they inefficient or something like that?

-------MaTrIxXx-------

For my own gratification, could someone convert the following printf into a cout? I know a little about cout but what I know looks extremely cumbersome and formatting is difficult But others seem to claim it's easy.

Code:

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printf("%02X  %10d  val=%7.3f \n", hval, dval, fval);

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Code:

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sprintf( buffer, "%02X  %10d  val=%7.3f \n", hval, dval, fval);
cout<<buffer;

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Hi,
Using cout and cin will make life easier. If you use scanf or printf you should be aware to put & in scanf.......... all those sort of things. But if you love C:o more then please use scanf and printf as i am ;) using.

scanf causes many a buffer overflow.

Quote:

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Originally posted by WaltP
For my own gratification, could someone convert the following printf into a cout? I know a little about cout but what I know looks extremely cumbersome and formatting is difficult But others seem to claim it's easy.

Code:

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printf("%02X  %10d  val=%7.3f \n", hval, dval, fval);

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Code:

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  cout << setfill('0') << setw(2) << hex << hval << setfill(' ') << dec << setw(12) << dval
      << "  val=" << setw(7) << setprecision(3) << fval << endl;

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However the hex is in lowercase vs uppercase for the printf(). I also vote for printf().

Code:

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cout << setfill('0') << setw(2) << hex << hval << setfill(' ') << dec << setw(12) << dval
      << "  val=" << setw(7) << setprecision(3) << fval << endl;
vs.
printf("%02X  %10d  val=%7.3f \n", hval, dval, fval);


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Thanks swoopy, that's what I thought. And I've written much more intricate printf's. So what's so special aboiut cout? Looks like most enhancements these days, both in and out of computers. "Let's remove the really useful stuff and get it to the bare bones. Too bad if you need anything specia 'cuz only 20% of the users actually use them."

Like tapes in answering machines.

printf may be a bit easier for the incredibly complex things like that, but for simply displaying a string or an int, or getting either from the user, cin and cout are easier.

It's also more type-safe. In printf, you have to memorize and double-check that the tokens '%?' are correct. If they aren't, your compiler has no way of knowing.

This won't work.

Code:

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cout << setfill('0') << setw(2) << hex << hval << setfill(' ') << dec << setw(12) << dval
      << "  val=" << setw(7) << setprecision(3) << fval << endl;

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http://cplusplus.com/ref/iostream/io...precision.html

I personally linke printf() and the like because C++ code looks too sloopy to me. I like things that look organized. << and >> and the like don't look organized so I'm reluctent to learn it.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Thantos
I personally linke printf() and the like because C++ code looks too sloopy to me. I like things that look organized. << and >> and the like don't look organized so I'm reluctent to learn it.

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I would agree, it doesn't look like code, looks like a bash script or something. Not saying bash scripts aren't code, just that it is not what I expect c & c similar codes to look like.

If C++ is a superset of C why did they even bother with cin/cout?


C++ at times seems more like a different language/knock off.

The whole object oriented stuff sounds great, I think ill try to avoid c++ as long as possible and give Objective C a shot. I havnt heard much, but i havent heard that they cheated either.

But then again there are alot of C++ers out there, there has to be something good about it...