Bit of a strawman on googling for results - sure I'm not suggesting you can hide the fact it's a relative of C, but I know when I first started out every question I would ask the almighty google oracle would be appended with "C++" - "Why is my code crap C++" - so usually you'd get an actual C++ style solution.

And so far as google and streams, well that's their opinion and fits into their particular style. There's plenty of dev houses that would tell you to avoid C style string manipulation due to the dangers of stack overflows etc.

Anyway I'm not wanting to fall into a C vs C++ argument, I'm merely pointing out that it's very possible for someone to pick up C++ without having the slightest bit of knowledge of C to begin with. I sure didn't know any C to start with.