iostream Details

You achieved the previously demonstrated input and output functionality by importing a file called iostream. What exactly is in iostream and what does it do? The iostream file imports the iostream class. (Don’t worry about what a class is just yet, you will learn all about this later. For now, think of a class as a bunch of related functions grouped together.) This class provides the basic capability for sequential and random-access I/O.

The iostream header file essentially uses streams, which are essentially a flow of characters. These characters may be 1 byte or 2 byte (“wide”), the latter are only necessary for languages with many characters.