打印出指向char数组的第一个索引的指针的值

Question

I'm new to C++ and is trying to learn the concept of pointer. When I tried to print out the value of pStart, I was expecting its value to be the address of text[0] in hexdecimal (eg something like 0x7fff509c5a88). However, the actual value printed out is abcdef.

Could someone explain it to me why this is the case? What parts am I missing?

char text[] = "abcdef";
char *pStart = &text[0]; 
cout << "value of pStart: " << pStart << endl;

Answer 1

Iostreams provide an overload that assumes a pointer to char points to a NUL-terminated (C-style) string, and prints out the string it points to.

To get the address itself to print out, cast it to a pointer to void instead:

cout << "value of pStsart: " << (void *)pStart << "\n";

Note that you don't really need pStart here at all though. The name of an array (usually, including this case) evaluates to the address of the beginning of the array, so you can just print it directly:

cout << "address of text: " << (void *)text << "\n";

Get out of the habit of using endl as well. It does things you almost certainly don't realize and almost never want.