What is the difference between flush and endl?

Question

I realize that the output is the same.
case 1:

cout << "enter password " <<flush;

case 2:

cout << "enter password " <<endl;

Possible duplicate of [endl and flushing the buffer](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4751972/endl-and-flushing-the-buffer) — Software2, Jun 30 '17 at 00:29

score 11 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 30 '17 at 00:29

11

endl adds an end of line characters to the output before flushing the buffers. flush only flushes.

answered Jun 30 '17 at 00:29

Serge

11,616
3
18
28

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 30 '17 at 00:30

cout is buffered. Text that goes into it might be held in memory until more text comes through, then it all goes out at the same time. This is more efficient but comes at the cost of not displaying all the text in its buffer sometimes.

I expect flush flushes the buffer so that all the text gets output right away.

I don't know whether flush also provides an end of line terminator.

What is the difference between flush and endl?

2 Answers2