"getline" won't work but "cin" will, what am I doing wrong?

Good afternoon everyone,

I was reading the "Jumping into c++" book when I got to exercise 4-1 that states:

"Ask the user for two users' ages, and indicate who is older; behave differently if both are over 100"

So I wrote my code (but I'm only stating what matters)

Code:

---

    string name1;
    string name2;
    int age1;
    int age2;

    cout << "User 1 please state your name: " << endl;
    getline( cin, name1, '\n' );
    cout << "User 1 please tell us your age: " << endl;
    cin >> age1;

    cout << "User 2 please state your name: " << endl;
    getline( cin, name2, '\n' );
    cout << "User 2 please tell us your age: " << endl;
    cin >> age2;

---

So here is my problem:

Immediately after the "User 2 please state your name: " is printed on the screen, "User 2 please tell us your age: " is printed, making it so I can't type the User 2' name, this happens using the "getline( cin, name2, '\n' )" (underlined), but when I use a "cin >> name2", the program works just fine.

What am I doing wrong? Can someone help?

Thanks,

Rodrigo

:rolleyes: So you don't get that doubt for your User 1 input?

In the console, I hope you can't move your cursor wherever you want and provide the input.

User 2 please state your name: X
User 2 please tell us your age: Y

Printing the Question like said above is possible. But providing the input in the location X, Y is not possible. The input will be given like:
User 2 please state your name:
User 2 please tell us your age: MyName
20

@sirama

That is what's bothering me, everything works fine for user1, but when I get to user2 I get something like

"User 1 please state your name:
x
User 1 please tell us your age:
23
User 2 please state your name:
User 2 please tell us your age:
24"

then I comes the output..

"is older" (since no name was given for the 2nd user)

Look at this line:

Code:

---

cin >> age1;

---

The user enters an age value that is stored into age1. The act of entering the input results in a newline left in the input buffer. This newline is not read. Now, when you do this:

Code:

---

getline( cin, name2, '\n' );

---

The newline is read, except that you wanted to read the next line. The appropriate solution is to use cin.ignore() to ignore the newline first.

@laserlight

Thank you for the explanation.

Problem solved =)