Changing C++ cin

Question

When you enter a space ' ' while typing into cin, it will take the first string before the space as the first value and the later one as the next.

So let's say we have this code:

cout << "Enter your Name";
cin >> name;

cout << "Enter your age";
cin >> age;

Now, let's say a user enters "John Bill".

It would take his name to be John and his age to be Bill.

Is there a way to:

1. Have the line automatically change it from a ' ' to a '_'?

2. Have it so that it will read that line as that line and have the space ' ' read as a normal character?

Answer 1

You want to use cin.getline() which can be used like this:

cin.getline(name, 9999, '\n');

And will include everything up to the newline or 9999 characters. This only works for c-style char arrays though.

getline(cin, name, '\n');

will work for std::strings.

If you want to replace the space with an underscore you're going to have to do that manually. Assuming you are using std::string you could make a function like this:

void replace_space(std::string &theString)
{
    std::size_t found = theString.find(" ");
    while(found != string::npos)
    {
        theString[found] = '_';
        found = theString.find(" ", found+1);
    }
}

Answer 2

When you do "cin >>", you are calling cin.get with the ios::skipws flag set by default. Call cin.get explicitly to have it include whitespaces.

cin.get(name, strlen(name))

Source: http://minich.com/education/wyo/cplusplus/cplusplusch10/getfunction.htm

Answer 3

To read a line in C++:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int main() {
    cout << "Enter some stuff: " ;
    string line;
    getline( cin, line );
    cout << "You entered: " << line << endl;
}