Getting string input from keyboard.

[SneakySnake]

I'm trying to get string input from the keyboard for my assignment. For my assignment the user can input 1 of 3 things (there's no menu system to determine which - i have to be able to tell what they did and respond.

The user can input:
1. a float number (75.6)
2. a letter grade, or other letter representing something (A+, DNF, etc.)
3. up to 5 ints (could be: "70 80 60 30 100" or "70 80"

This is the code I have currently but it does not work, has it forces the user to input 5 things, regardless of whether or not they press enter: I need to be able to input a string, and then analyze that string to determine what sort of input they did, and if necessary pull the numbers from the string.

int main()
{
    char mark1[4] = "", mark2[4] = "", mark3[4] = "", mark4[4] = "", mark5[4] = "";


    cout << "input the students mark(s)";
    cin >> mark1 >> mark2 >> mark3 >> mark4 >> mark5;
    
    cout << "numbers are:" << mark1 << mark2; // this is just for testing
    return 0;
}

[laserlight]

Use std::getline to read into a std::string, then inspect the contents of the string read to decide what it is, and parse it accordingly. To decide what it is, you could do things like search for '.' in the string, or use std::isalpha from <cctype> to check if any character is alphabetic.

[SneakySnake]

thank you.

This is what I'm using now: is this the best way to do it? ( it seems to be working fine)

int main()
{
    char marks[15];


    cin.getline (marks, 15, '\n');
    
    cout << marks;
    return 0;
}

[laserlight]

That could work too, but you don't have enough space for five 100 marks with a space in between each of them.

[SneakySnake]

Ah yes, fixed that.

I'm not familiar with the std::getline way. What would the code look like for that?

[laserlight]

Something like:

#include <string>
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    std::string line;
    std::getline(std::cin, line);
    std::cout << line << std::endl;
    return 0;
}