How do I include spaces in ifstream?

I am trying to make a program that writes information out to a text file on exit and reads it back into the program when it is started again. I am using fstream to do this. I'm having an issue with spaces . I can write a string out to the text using ofstream.

Code:

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string name = "Bob Patterson";
ofstream output( "data.txt", ios::out );
output << name << endl; //writes the name "Bob Patterson to the file data.txt

string inputName;
ifstream input( "data.txt", ios::in );
input >> inputName;
cout << inputName; //this only outputs the first name "Bob" I want it to say "Bob Patterson";

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However when I read it back into the program on startup it only reads until the space and completely misses the next word. How do I fix this?

Try using getline() as like this:

Code:

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std::getline(input, inputName, '\n');

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Thanks. If I do this..

Code:

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string inputName;
ifstream input( "data.txt", ios::in );
getline(input, inputName, '\n');
input >> inputName;
cout << inputName;

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It seems to work. What does that getline command do?

It does what its name says. It gets a line. It uses the last parameter as a delimiter (the character determining what is a line and what is not). If I recall correctly, cin discards spaces.

Using the << is going to grab everything up to the first space I do believe... effectivly it is the same as using getline(iStream, var, ' ');