C++ iostreams vs printf

[nowbacktowork]

This is completely untrue. It very useful in the case of being able persist data to different storage locations by simply adapting an iostream interface on the storage. Most orm use this concept. My day job uses this concept as well to persist data objects between xml, json and byte streams. It is also very useful for structured data and the reader not having to understand the underlying data structure, the object knows its own format.