What are the rules of the std::cin object in C++?

Question

I am writing a small program for my personal use to practice learning C++ and for its functionality, an MLA citation generator (I'm writing a large paper with tens of citations).

For lack of a better way to do it (I don't understand classes or using other .cpp files inside your main, so don't bother telling me, I'll work on that when I have more time), I am writing a function for each type of citation. I might break this down into a function for each reused code if I get more time.

My question is: how does the std::cin object work? I am currently reading in with std::cin >> for the strings I expect to be single words, and getline(std::cin, string) for the strings with spaces. I am not getting the right output, though. I just want to know how std::cin works and why I keep unexpectedly skipping over some some inputs (for instance, it skips over webPage instead of giving me a chance to input into it).

void webCit()
{
std::cout << "Leave any unknowns blank.\n";

std::cout << "Author last name: ";
std::string lastName;
std::cin >> lastName;

if (lastName.size() != 0)
{
    lastName = lastName + ", ";    
}


std::cout << "Author first name: ";
std::string firstName;
std::cin >> firstName;

if (firstName.size() != 0)
{
    firstName = firstName + ". ";
}


std::cout << "Article title: ";
std::string articleTitle;
getline(std::cin, articleTitle);

if (articleTitle.size() != 0)
{
    articleTitle = "\"" + articleTitle + ".\" ";
}

std::cout << "Title of web page: ";
std::string pageTitle;
std::cin >> pageTitle;

if(pageTitle.size() != 0)
{
    pageTitle = pageTitle + ". ";
}

std::cout << "Publication date: ";
std::string publicationDate;
getline(std::cin, publicationDate);

if(publicationDate.size() != 0)
{
    publicationDate = publicationDate + ". ";

} 

std::cout << "Web address: ";
std::string webAddress;
getline(std::cin, webAddress);

webAddress = "<" + webAddress + ">. ";

std::cout << "Date accessed: ";
std::string dateAccessed;
getline(std::cin, dateAccessed);

if(dateAccessed.size() != 0)
{
    dateAccessed = dateAccessed + ". ";
}

std::string citation =
    lastName + firstName + articleTitle + pageTitle + publicationDate + webAddress + dateAccessed;

std::cout << citation; //TEST; remove after
}

EDIT: I/O

Leave any unknowns blank.
Author last name: Hooked
Author first name: Jerbear
Article title: Title of web page: title
Publication date: Web address: www.win.com
Date accessed: 4/29/09
Hooked, Jerbear. Title. <www.win.com>. 4/29/09.

As you can see, something is going wrong, because my input is getting skipped over.

Answer 1

When you use the >> operator, cin reads up until the next whitespace character, but it doesn't process the whitespace. So when you have

std::cin >> str1;
std::getline(std::cin, str2);

the second call will just process the newline character, and you won't have a chance to type in any input.

Instead, if you're planning to use getline after an operator >>, you can call std::cin.ignore() to eat the newline before you call getline.

Edit: it works as you expected when you do

std::cin >> str1;
std::cin >> str2;

since the second call will ignore all leading whitespace.

Answer 2

What is happening here is that std::cin >> firstName; only reads up to but not including the first whitespace character, which includes the newline (or '\n') when you press enter, so when it gets to getline(std::cin, articleTitle);, '\n' is still the next character in std::cin, and getline() returns immediately.

// cin = "Bloggs\nJoe\nMan of Steel, Woman of Kleenex\n"
std::cin >> lastName;
std::cin >> firstName;
// firstName = "Joe", lastName = "Bloggs", cin = "\nMan of Steel, Woman of Kleenex\n"
getline(std::cin, articleTitle);
// articleTitle = "", cin = "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex\n"

Adding 'std::cin >> std::ws' (ws meaning whitespace) before your calls to getline() fixes the problem:

std::cin >> firstName >> std::ws;
getline(std::cin, articleTitle);

But it is easier to see where you missed it if you do it in the argument:

std::cin >> firstName;
getline(std::cin >> std::ws, articleTitle);