Question

In C++, which would be faster if repeated, say, 5000 times:

cout << "text!" << endl;

or

my_text_file << "text!" << endl;

(writing to a file vs. cout-ing to the console)

Edit:

I ask because when writing to the console, you see all the text being printed which seems like it would slow down the loop. In a file, you arn’t seeing the text being printed, which seems as if it would take less time.

Just tested it:

Console: > 2000 ms using endl and \n

File: 40 ms with endl and 4 ms with \n

Answer 1

Writing to a file would be much faster. This is especially true since you are flushing the buffer after every line with endl.

On a side note, you could speed the printing significantly by doing repeating cout << "text!\n"; 5000 times, then flushing the buffer using flush().