Thread: Can a String Have Spaces In It?

Can they? When I have the user input a string that has spaces in it, my program goes crazy. Is this because strings can't have spaces, or is it something wrong with my program?

A string can have spaces in it, but a lot of string-handling functions stop when they encounter a space.

The overloaded >> operator is designed to stop at whitespace. You might look up:

istream::getline()
string::getline()

Both will read in tabs spaces and stop a newline (or other delineator if supplied).

Can anything be done about that? All I'm doing with the string is putting it into a vector and displaying on the screen.

Code:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <vector>
using namespace std;


int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
	vector<string> stuffs;
	string vectorBuf;


	// Reads input into "buffer" and pushes it onto vector
	for(int i = 0; getline(cin, vectorBuf, '\n'); )
	{
		stuffs.push_back(vectorBuf);
	}

	// Iterates through the vector spitting out it's contents
	for(vector<string>::iterator iter = stuffs.begin();
		iter < stuffs.end(); iter++)
	{
		cout << *iter << endl;
	}
}

Be done about what?

Can anything be done about that?

Yes - he just showed you. When you use the << operator, you're actually calling a function (even though you don't really see this) that stops when it encounters a space. If you use the getline functions like he showed you, they will accept spaces, and only stop once they get to a newline character. You can look through www.cppreference.com to find other functions and their behavior.

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



where cin is where4 your getting your input from
where instring is your string variable
and '\n' is your delimiter.

for use of this you must include <string>
header, if you are currently unaware
you can define instring like this


string instring;