Question

I do not like using namespace std, but I am also tired of having to type std:: in front of every cout, cin, cerr and endl. So, I thought of giving them shorter new names like this:

// STLWrapper.h

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

extern std::ostream& Cout;
extern std::ostream& Cerr;
extern std::istream& Cin;
extern std::string&  Endl;

// STLWrapper.cpp

#include "STLWrapper.h"

std::ostream& Cout = std::cout;
std::ostream& Cerr = std::cerr;
std::istream& Cerr = std::cin;
std::string _EndlStr("\n");
std::string& Endl = _EndlStr;

This works. But, are there any problems in the above which I am missing? Is there a better way to achieve the same?

Answer 1

Why not

using std::cin;
using std::cout;

and so on? Then in your code you can use cin, cout, and so on, without accidentally injecting all of the rest of the std namespace into your code.