Paul A. Bristow wrote:
> > 
> > cout <<
> >   "My first line" "\n"
> >   "My second line";
>  
>  Are you sure that this is more efficient?
>  
>  cout <<
>     "My first line" << endl <<
>     "My second line";
>  
>  has proven LESS efficient and I suspect the flush caused by
>  encountering \n will have the same effect.  Of course, the
>  differences are tiny in practice. 

I just did a test using VC7.1: '\n' did not trigger a flush.  Assuming that is the correct b
ehavior, that does indeed make the string concatenation method the most efficient.

>  I view the newl as much clearer.  And the concept that endl actually
>  writes the buffered output doesn't seem too complicated.
>  
>  As a non-C programmer, "\n" looks plain nasty to me :-(

It looks like the intent of newl is to take the place of '\n' is the C++ language, as a way 
to improve C++ from a syntactical standpoint.  I think that such a goal should be handled wi
th an overall view of the language, rather than with just an isolated view of I/O streams.  
The larger question would address how the '\n' replacement interacts with strings, including
 string concatenation and operator overloading.

I'd say it would be an interesting issue to raise on comp.lang.c++, except for one thing: it
 would be hard to demonstrate how one abbreviation is better than another and worth a langua
ge change, especially when complicated by the precipitating changes required to harmonize '\
t', '\r', etc.


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