stdio vs iostream [closed]

Question

When I search on the internet for the difference between these two libraries, everyone says that <iostream> is the standard I/O library of C++ and <cstdio> is for C. My professor says that cin>> and cout<< are not good functions and if we use cin>> many times our application will definitely crash. He also says that stdio provides nearly 3 times faster input and output than iostream. However, I prefer using iostream because it is more convenient, and also I don't know if my professor is right.

So what do you advise me to use?

Answer 1

Use streams in C++ and stdio.h in C. Yes, streams are a bit slower, but do those milliseconds count? User input is rarely a bottleneck of an application.

And if streams are used properly, and your compiler/runtime libraries are ok, your application won't crash.

But, if you have good, explainable reasons to use cstdio functions, then it is fully legitimate to use them in C++ as well.

Answer 2

Using iostream should not make your program crash. It can be slow, but that's only because it's trying to interoperate with stdio. That synchronization can be turned off¹. iostream is the idiomatic C++ way to get input, and I'd recommend its use over stdio functions in most cases when using C++.

¹ using std::ios::sync_with_stdio(false);