Thread: Read from input skipping characters

I have a program that works like this from the command prompt

program < input

the input is a large list of numbers.

i need to read every 3rd number.
at the moment i flick through the whole list like so...

Code:

char c
int number, number1
while (cin >> number1){
          number = number + number1;
          for(i=0;i<3;i++)
             cin >> c
}

how can i skip to the third number (assuming its between 0-9) each time, without having to feed the entire input through a char?

thanks, Karim