Getline

[Hazique35]

Hello, I have been looking at a tutorial on another website, and this bit of code is always used:

getline (cin, //some variable)

Sorry if thhis isnt very clear, but I don understand why there is a

cin

inside the function not outside it like this:

cin.getline();

What are the differnces between these two things?

Thanks.

[c99tutorial]

getline has two versions: the member function of cin has a signature like this

// istream& getline (char* s, streamsize n );
// istream& getline (char* s, streamsize n, char delim );

You use this one with fixed character buffers like this

char buf[1000];
cin.getline(buf, 1000);

I think the version which operates on std::string came later in the C++ standard, so it's declared differently (as a non-member function)

// istream& getline (istream& is, string& str, char delim);
// istream& getline (istream& is, string& str);

// ...

string s;
getline(cin, s);

I would prefer the second version, unless you specifically want to limit lines to a certain length

istream::getline - C++ Reference
getline (string) - C++ Reference

[Hazique35]

Thank you for the reply. I now understand the second version, but now im confused with the first one... Is that one usually used with C-style strings?

[c99tutorial]

Most of the time char* indicates a c-style string, but to be sure you should check the reference. Look at two links above.

[Hazique35]

Thanks.