cin and cout are not operators, they are objects. cin is console input while cout is console output (explicitly idintified as std::cin and std::cout). In other words they are the C++ standard library stream objects that represent stdin and stdout respectively. The corresponding std::cerr stream represents stderr, the console error stream. std::cerr is typically directed to the screen while std::in and std::cout are also typically directed to the screen but can be redirected via the command line when executing the binary executable.