Question

This might be a beginner question and understanding how cout works is probably key here. If somebody could link to a good explanation, it would be great.
cout<<cout and cout<<&cout print hex values separated by 4 on a linux x86 machine.

Answer 1

cout << cout is equivalent to cout << cout.operator void *(). This is the idiom used before C++11 to determine if an iostream is in a failure state, and is implemented in std::ios_base; it usually returns the address of static_cast<std::ios_base *>(&cout).

cout << &cout prints out the address of cout.

Since std::ios_base is a virtual base class of cout, it may not necessarily be contiguous with cout. That is why it prints a different address.