Thread: cin.getline isn't Working and I Can't Figure Out Why

Okay, so in my continuing quest to make a text adventure and learn C++ in the process, I found in the tutorial a nifty way for the user to enter long strings without having the program flip out if there's a space in the string. I wanted to let players enter their name, or have the option of a few pre-set names, so I defined variables and built a switch case like so:

variable/array

Code:

int playername;
char enteredplayername[256];

switch case

Code:

 switch (playername)
    {
        case 1:
        cout << "The earth pony nods. \"Okay then Heavy Hooves, we need to get you sorted out, \n we're all grateful for what you did, but even with that kind of sacrifice, it's going to take us a while to trust you.\" \n Sacrifice? And then you remember... Oh no. No, no, no...\n 1: Your Horn \n 2: Your Wings \n 3: Your Leg (Earth Pony)\n\n";
        break;
        case 2:
        cout << "The earth pony nods. \"Okay then Far Sighted, we need to get you sorted out,  \n we're all grateful for what you did, but even with that kind of sacrifice, it's going to take us a while to trust you.\" \n Sacrifice? And then you remember... Oh no. No, no, no...\n 1: Your Horn \n 2: Your Wings \n 3: Your Leg (Earth Pony)\n\n";
        break;
        case 3:
        cout << "The earth pony nods. \"Okay then Swift Tailed, we need to get you sorted out, \n we're all grateful for what you did, but even with that kind of sacrifice, it's going to take us a while to trust you.\" \n Sacrifice? And then you remember... Oh no. No, no, no...\n 1: Your Horn \n 2: Your Wings \n 3: Your Leg (Earth Pony)\n\n";
        case 4:
        //cout << "Type your character's first name: ";
        //cin >> enteredfirstname;
        //cout << "Type your character's last name: ";
        //cin >> enteredlastname;
        cout<<"Please enter your character's name: ";
        cin.getline ( enteredplayername, 256, '\n' );              
        cout << "The earth pony nods Okay then " << enteredplayername << ", we need to get you sorted out, \n we're all grateful for what you did, but even with that kind of sacrifice, it's going to take us a while to trust you.\" \n Sacrifice? And then you remember... Oh no. No, no, no...\n 1: Your Horn \n 2: Your Wings \n 3: Your Leg (Earth Pony)\n\n";
        break;
    }

What I used is very close to the example program provided in the tutorial for entering long strings, and that worked fine when I ran it through the compiler, but when I try to run the program it doesn't let you enter anything for case 4 and skips right to printing out the next cout statement with a blank space where enteredplayername should be. I'm having trouble figuring out why and would be really grateful for the advice of more seasoned programmers.

Just a minor, unrelated observation - it appears you left the "break" statement out for "case 3".

Thank you for your help everyone, I added a cin.ignore() statement before and the problem cleared right up.

Originally Posted by Elysia

I strongly suggest you use std::string and std::getline instead of char arrays and std::cin.getline.
Example:

std::string s;
std::getline(s, std::cin);

This is not prone to programming errors or buffer overflows and allows for easier string manipulation that is safe and easy.

One question this raises, and I know this makes me a total newbie for asking, but it just hasn't been described in detail in the parts of the tutorial I've read so far, is what exactly is a buffer overflow? I've been seeing the term (or something like it) as an error every time I try to use certain functions without a '()' at the end, but other than that it has not been simply described to me.

Originally Posted by Elysia

A buffer overflow happens when one writes more bytes to a buffer than there is room.
Consider having a buffer (ie some local array) with n bytes.
Then if you write n + 1 bytes or more to that variable, you get a buffer overflow.

Buffer overflow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oh, now I get it. Thank you for clearing things up!