Difference stringstream and ostringstream

Question

I was trying out the below snippet but it is not giving the desired output:

#include<iostream>
#include<sstream>
using namespace std;
void MyPrint(ostream& stream)
{
    cout<<stream.rdbuf()<< endl;
}
int main()
{
    stringstream ss;
    ss<<"hello there";
    MyPrint(ss);                //Prints fine

    ostringstream oss;
    oss<<"hello there";
    MyPrint(oss);               //Does not print anything
    getchar();
}

I am aware that the only possible differences between stringstream and ostringstream is that the later forces the direction and is a bit faster than stringstream.

Am I missing out on anything?

PS: A similar question was posted earlier but didn't get any answers.

Answer 1

std::stringstream and std::ostringstream pass different flags to the std::stringbuf. In particular, the std::stringbuf of an std::ostringstream does not support reading. And std::cout << stream.rdbuf() is a read operation on the streambuf.

The way to extract characters from an std::ostringstream is by using the std::ostringstream::str() function.