The ostream_iterator() is useful for reading the elements of a container to the standard output or to a file. However, because this iterator works in conjunction with STL algorithms, it allows you to perform a variety of actions besides merely reading the elements of a container.

Suppose you have a vector of int and you want to display only the unique numbers stored in the vector:

#include #include #include int iArr[] = {2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6};vector vecInt (iArr, iArr+9) ;ostream_iterator output (cout);unique_copy(vecInt.begin(), vecInt.end(), output);// output would be 23456

To display delimiters, use:

ostream_iterator output_1 (cout, " ABC ");unique_copy(vecInt.begin(), vecInt.end(), output_1); // 2 ABC 3 ABC 4 ABC 5 ABC 6 ABC

Remember that ostream_iterator() takes a char* as a delimiter, so it must be null terminated.

To write the output to a file, pass an object of the ofstream class to the ostream_iterator:

ofstream ofile ("Test.txt")ostream_iterator output_2 (ofile, " ABC ");unique_copy(vecInt.begin(), vecInt.end(), output_2); // 2 ABC 3 ABC 4 ABC 5 ABC 6 ABC