File I/O Issue

While playing around a bit with File I/O I created a small test program. It displays a menu, from which the use can select two functions. One to write a string to a specified file and one to read a file. Now it all works if I call the functions within main. However if I call the functions from the menu function the do not function like they should, like skipping any user input. What exactly is going wrong? There are not compile errors btw. I suspect some variable scope issue but I can not find the error.

Code:

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// File IO Test1.cpp : Defines the entry point for the console application.
//

#include "stdafx.h"
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;



void printfile();
void readfile();
void menu();



int main()        {

        menu();




        return 0;
}






void menu()        {
        int x;

        cout<<"<1> Print file function"<<endl;
        cout<<"<2> Read file function"<<endl;
        cout<<"<0> Exit program"<<endl;
        cout<<"Select funtion and press <ENTER>): ";
        cin>>x;

        if (x < 0 || x > 2)        {
                cout<<"<ERROR> Invalid menu selection. Exiting program..."<<endl;
        }

        else        {
        switch (x)       
        {
                case 1:
                        printfile();
                        break;

                case 2:
                        readfile();
                        break;

                case 0:
                cout<<"<0> Exiting...."<<endl;
                        break;
        }
        }
}







void readfile()        {
        char filename[81];
        char content[81];

        cout<<"Enter a filename and press ENTER: ";
        cin.getline(filename, 80);

        ifstream file_in(filename);
        file_in.getline(content, 80);
        cout<<content<<endl;
}






void printfile ()        {
        char filename[81];
        char content[81];

        cout<<"Enter the filename: ";
        cin.getline(filename, 80);
        ofstream file_out (filename);

        cout<<"Enter text to write to file: ";
        cin.getline(content, 80);
        file_out<<content<<endl;
        file_out.close();
}

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So again in short: If I call the printfile or readfile function directly in main it works, but going from main > menu() > readfile() it starts acting weird.

The problem is the line:

Code:

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cin>>x;

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leaves a newline character in the buffer. This newline character is then read in when you call cin.getline() as the user input. Change your code to:

Code:

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cin>>x;
cin.ignore(); // Remove newline from the input buffer

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Ok this appears to fix it. But why does cin>>x; mess up other functions of the program. I expected things in one function be "locked" inside it.


cin>>x;
As far as I understand this means store whatever the user types in into the variable x (everything up to pressing enter)


cin.ignore(); // Remove newline from the input buffer
What does this mean in simpler terms? I am not getting the meaning of it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jefff

Ok this appears to fix it. But why does cin>>x; mess up other functions of the program. I expected things in one function be "locked" inside it.

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So, if some function launches some nuclear missiles, and you return from this function, you expect the missiles to disappear?

Well I do not get why an input that was collected in menu() should mess up other functions. I mean it looks harmless, get user input, store it into a local x variable and be done with it. Why does this have any influence on input operations in other functions?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jefff

Well I do not get why an input that was collected in menu() should mess up other functions. I mean it looks harmless, get user input, store it into a local x variable and be done with it. Why does this have any influence on input operations in other functions?

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You've only got one keyboard, right? cin is shared among all the functions, and the fact that you typed extra stuff in one function means that that extra input is still waiting around the next time you look for keyboard input (whichever function that happens to be). If you like metaphors, your menu() function is a tenant that trashed the place when they got evicted, so when the next function "moves in" they have to deal with the mess left behind (a "nice" function would have cleaned up behind themselves, by leaving the input buffer clean).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jefff

Well I do not get why an input that was collected in menu() should mess up other functions. I mean it looks harmless, get user input, store it into a local x variable and be done with it. Why does this have any influence on input operations in other functions?

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Input is a stream of characters. By performing input, you are removing characters from this stream, which obviously will have some sort of effect on other code which is also trying to read characters from this stream.

One solution is to "flush" the input buffer by using cin.ignore(). This discards characters until the next line. A far better approach, in my opinion, is to not mix line-based and entity-based input in the same program in the first place, as this problem only arises in that scenario.

In other words, mixing this form of input:

Code:

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cin >> foo

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With this form of input:

Code:

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cin.getline();

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Will automatically open you up to this type of problem. Either use the '>>' everywhere, or use getline() everywhere, but do not mix them

Ok, so whenever cin>>somethings gets an input it floats around in the "buffer" until it is cleaned out. Which in this case messed up my program because the other functions skipped the input because there was something there already, correct?

Considering this, would using

Code:

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cin.ignore();

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after each cin>> operation be a good idea?


EDIT: The above was written without seeing brewbucks last post.

So in order to not mix up these types,
Would

Code:

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cin >> foo

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and

Code:

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cin.getline(foo, 10)

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produce the same thing (I.e. store the complete user input in foo)?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jefff

Considering this, would using

Code:

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cin.ignore();

---

after each cin>> operation be a good idea?

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No. cin.ignore() will discard ALL characters up until the next line break. That might include actual data instead of useless whitespace. So you would be incorrectly discarding real input. Suppose you are trying to read three integers, and the user enters them all on one line, as "1 2 3". If you are calling cin.ignore() after every extraction operation, then the "2" and the "3" will vanish into hyperspace

EDIT: Is this problem really damn annoying? You bet. As I said, the fundamental cause of the problem is trying to mix line-based and extraction-based input. Stick to one or the other and this problem does not occur.

Just a clarification on brewbuck's statement: if you literally use cin.ignore(), you would only be discarding one character. If you supply it with certain arguments, e.g.,

Code:

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cin.ignore(numeric_limits<streamsize>::max(), '\n');

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it would then discard characters until the next line break (or when EOF is reached, whichever comes first). std::numeric_limits is available via the <limits> header; std::streamsize is available via the <ios> header.

However avoiding

Code:

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cin>>x;

---

is not really an option as far as I know, because I need an an int for my switch case. So if I type

Code:

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cin.ignore();

---

it literally means remove 1 character/letter/number from the input stream, which in case the user only typed one number, would be sufficient?

>> it literally means remove 1 character/letter/number from the input stream, which in case the user only typed one number, would be sufficient?
You are still misunderstanding. cin>>x will remove the numbers from the input stream. The problem is that in order for the user to add those numbers to the stream in the first place, they had to press the "Enter" key. This placed a '\n' character in the input stream after the numbers. The cin.ignore() statement is to ignore the '\n' character. Otherwise when you call cin.getline() it will read in the '\n' character as the input (which is just an empty line). That is why it originally appeared that this input was "skipped".

I think I get it now. Following your explanation it goes like this:

Code:

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cin>>x

---

takes whatever the user types in and stores it into x.
However since the user typed <number> and ENTER, this is put into the stream:

<number>\n

of which cin>>x "shaves off" the <number>. However \n remains in teh stream, which then gets picked up by cin.getline and causes the skip in the functions.
cin.ignore removes that \n which also removes the skipping.
I hope I got it correctly this time. I also assume that cin.getline takes a complete line and interprets it as a string? Because I tried cin.getline with an int variable and it produced errors when compiling.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jefff

However \n remains in teh stream, which then gets picked up by cin.getline and causes the skip in the functions.
cin.ignore removes that \n which also removes the skipping.

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Yes, that is the idea.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jefff

I also assume that cin.getline takes a complete line and interprets it as a string? Because I tried cin.getline with an int variable and it produced errors when compiling.

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Yes, it stores what it reads into a character array as a null terminated string. If you want to store into a std::string object instead, you should use the non-member version, e.g., std::getline(std::cin, str);