I was reading about the << operator in c++ from C++ Primer.
In it, there are some lines written about << operator
cout << "Some string" evaluates to a left hand ostream operator that is the result of the expression is cout object itself.(We say that operator associates left to right) .
It would be great it someone explains what is the meaning of the above mentioned lines.
It means that
cout << a << b
is the same as
(cout << a) << b
not
cout << (a << b)
To clarify: the cout << a part outputs a, then returns cout, so the result of (cout << a) can be used as the left side to << b. Left-associativity just means if brackets could make the expression mean something else, assume brackets are set from left to right.
Left to right associativity means that the expression is implicitly parenthesized like this:
(((cout << "foo") << "bar") << "baz")
In other words, the leftmost operation comes first.
By contrast, assignment is right-associative in most languages:
a = b = c + 5;
assigns c + 5 to both "a" and "b" because the assignment operator works from right-to-left.
