user input pre-enter string?

Using getline(cin, string) is it possible to pre-enter the string so the user can edit it, a bit like when you press up in the console?

Code:

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string astring;
cout<<"Please change this text: ";
astring = "This is to be in the prompt the users edits.";
getline(cin, astring); //Prompts user input
cout<<astring<<endl; //Outputs the edited string

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So the console would give this, the part after the colon being editable:

Code:

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Please change this text: This is to be in the prompt the users edits.

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Yes, but I suppose you'll have to get into platform specific header files to access the right API calls.

So it's not something where you could simply run a C++ command to auto insert the pre-defined text into the prompt?

I don't think so.

For example, on Windows I think your starting point should be WriteConsoleInput

Something like this:

Code:

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#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <cctype>
#include <windows.h>

void send_to_input_stream(const std::string& msg)
{
    std::vector<INPUT_RECORD> events;
    for (unsigned i = 0; i != msg.size(); ++i) {
        //sloppily handle characters A-Za-z and space
        //TODO: do lots of work to handle all characters
        char c = std::toupper(msg[i]);
        if ((c >= 'A' && c <= 'Z') || c == ' ') {
            INPUT_RECORD rec_template;
            //fill in a key-down event
            rec_template.EventType = KEY_EVENT;
            rec_template.Event.KeyEvent.bKeyDown = TRUE;
            rec_template.Event.KeyEvent.wRepeatCount = 1;
            rec_template.Event.KeyEvent.wVirtualKeyCode = c;
            rec_template.Event.KeyEvent.wVirtualScanCode = MapVirtualKey(c, 0);
            rec_template.Event.KeyEvent.uChar.AsciiChar = msg[i];
            rec_template.Event.KeyEvent.dwControlKeyState = std::isupper(msg[i]) ? SHIFT_PRESSED : 0;
            events.push_back(rec_template);

            //change to add corresponding key-up event
            rec_template.Event.KeyEvent.bKeyDown = FALSE;
            rec_template.Event.KeyEvent.dwControlKeyState = 0;
            events.push_back(rec_template);
        }
    }
    DWORD written_count;
    WriteConsoleInput(GetStdHandle(STD_INPUT_HANDLE), &events[0], events.size(), &written_count);
}

int main()
{
    std::cout << "Please change this text: ";
    send_to_input_stream("This is to be in the prompt the users edits");
    std::string input;
    std::getline(std::cin, input);
    std::cout << input;
}

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ok, thanks, I'll look into this just as soon as I've finished figuring out printing. :-)