Thread: help with getline() please.

Well, I'm stumped again. This is a pretty simple problem. Get info from user for 3 products, sort them by price and display in a table. So, I have included the string library, and I'm using getline(cin, userString, '\n') to get the description from the user. It works fine the first time through, but on second and third times it does the cout right before the getline prompt then skips to the next cout(for serial number). It's not wrong syntaxually (sp?), I'm just wondering if there's something I'm missing or if it's my compiler. Here's the code

Code:

int main()
{

    string userString1, userString2, userString3;
    int serial1, serial2, serial3;
    double price1 = 0, price2 = 0, price3 = 0;
    char yesNo = 'n';
    
    cout << "Please enter information:" << endl;
    cout << "Brief Description: ";
    getline(cin, userString1, '\n');  //works here

    cout << "Serial number: ";
    cin >> serial1;
    cout << "Price: $";
    cin >> price1;


    cout << "Please enter information:" << endl;
    cout << "Brief Description: ";
    getline(cin, userString2, '\n'); //doesn't work here
       
    cout << "Serial number: ";
    cin >> serial2;
    cout << "Price: $";
    cin >> price2;
    
    
    cout << "Please enter information:" << endl;
    cout << "Brief Description: ";
    getline(cin, userString3, '\n');
    cout << "Serial number: ";
    cin >> serial3;
    cout << "Price: $";
    cin >> price3;

    cout << "Thank you." << endl;
    cout << "Ready to display table(Y or N)? ";
    cin >> yesNo;
    Sorter(price1, serial1, userString1, 
           price2, serial2, userString2,
           price3, serial3, userString3);
    cin >> yesNo;
    return(0);
}

can anybody help? thanks!

>> You need to flush the input buffer before each getline().
In general that is not correct. You need to do it after each call to cin >> that precedes a call to getline. Or if you prefer, after each call to cin >>.

The easiest way to do this is to call cin.ignore() after each cin>> call. This ignores the trailing newline (or other whitespace) from when the user enters the response.

How can I ignore extra spaces in the input?
I am not alowd to use flush, fflush or anything like that.

I have to get a line (optionaly with too many spaces) and than separate to words (with no spaces). I used getline(cin, str).
.

Well, I tried this code. It works untill the final loop, than it crush.

Code:

     getline(cin, str, '\n'); //I also tried without '\n'

     //now replacing every 2 ' ' with one ' '
     while (str.find("  ")) {//ok untill last loop - than flying...
           str.replace(str.find("  "), 2, " ");
     }

Than I tried this code, but it didn't compile...

Code:

     getline(cin, str, '\n'); //I also tried without '\n'

     //another stop condition for the loop
     while (str.find("  ") != str.end()) {//my compiler almost killed me...
           str.replace(str.find("  "), 2, " ");
     }

If anyone can tell my what's the problem I'd be thankful.
Thank you
.