using cin.getline() with string

[Luis E Cuadrado]

Hello everybody: I was wondering if ther is a way to use the cin.getline() function when you use string objects. With the code snipet below I get the following error:

error C2664: 'class std::basic_istream > &__thiscall std::basic_istream >::getline(char *,int,char)' : cann
ot convert parameter 1 from 'class std::basic_string,class std::allocator >' to 'char *'
No user-defined-conversion operator available that can perform this conversion, or the operator cannot be called
Error executing cl.exe.

hwproject.exe - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)

I always encounter this problem and I don't know what to do to solve this. Is there a better way to do this with string objects? Can you tell me what I did wrong with the code below? Any answer is more than welcome. #include <string> #include <iostream> using namespace std; void main() { int itemNum; string Desc; cout << "Enter Item Number: "; cin >> itemNum; cout << "Enter Description: "; cin.getline(Desc, sizeof(Desc), (char)"\n"); } Luis E. Cuadrado :0)

[valikac]

One solution is std::getline(). string sInput; std::getline(cin, sInput); Kuphryn

[Luis E Cuadrado]

Thanks for replying Kuphryn. I gave it a try and the program complies but when I run it, the variable where I store the value using the std::getline() function doesn't show up when I use cout.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
 
void main()
{
string itemID;
string Desc;
cout << "Enter ID: ";
cin >> itemID;
cout << "Enter Description: ";
getline(cin, Desc);

cout << "itemID: " << itemID << endl;
cout << "Desc: " << Desck << endl;

} 

This is the output that I got.

Enter ID: 222
Enter Description: matches
itemID: 222
Desc:

I'm asuming that there are some kind of garbage collecting thing that I have to do here, is it? Let me know what you think. Thanks for your help, Luis E. Luis E. Cuadrado :0)

[Joaquin M Lopez Munoz]

Hola Luis, There are two problems, one of them is not your fault:

• std::getline is broken in MSVC++ 6.0. See here[^] for a fix.

• (this assumes you've installed the previous fix) After reading the int, there are extra characters pending to be read in the first line (at least, the terminating '\n'): eat this before going for the description:

  #include <iostream>
  #include <string>

  using namespace std;
  void main()
  {
  string itemID;
  string Desc;
  cout << "Enter ID: ";
  cin>>itemID;
  cout << "Enter Description: ";
  getline(cin, Desc); // eats what remains of the previous line
  getline(cin, Desc);
  cout << "itemID: " << itemID << endl;
  cout << "Desc: " << Desc << endl;
  }

Joaquín M López Muñoz Telefónica, Investigación y Desarrollo

[Luis E Cuadrado]

Hola Joaquín, Thank you for your response. I did exactly what you told me and it works. Thank you for pointing me out to that Microsoft site and for your help. Another question that I have is, if I want to do that in a loop. Do I need to flush or wipe-out the stream that I'm using? The reason that I'm asking is that I put everything in a loop except the cout statements and the loops keeps going and it doesn't stop. I step over the code and I noticed that there still data, aparently in the stream. Have you experience this before? Thanks, Luis E. Luis E. Cuadrado :0)