Why first getline doesnt work?

I have written a program, which is supposed to read 3 lines from a text file, the first is char, second string and thirs an integer. The input.txt is:

Code:

---

i
Arnold Schwarzenegger
60

---

And my code:

Code:

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int main()
{
        ifstream data("input.txt");
        string name;
        int age;
        char instr;

        data >> instr;
        getline(data, name);
        data >> age;
}

---

However, the getline does not read anything from the file, and after that, when the program processes to the next line of code, the 'data >> age' statement tries to read the 'Arnold Schwarzenegger' field into the age variable...
Why is that? Why does the getline read nothing? How do I make it work?

Getline is reading the newline after the i, since all you're doing with the first >> is reading a single character.

You're generally better off reading each line (using getline) into a buffer, then parsing that buffer to see what it contains.

Mixing and matching input styles is always a bug at some point.

have a call to the ignore function before your getline so that the '\n' from the previous line won't be parsed by the getline function causing it to read nothing and thus throwing off your data >> age line

Code:

---

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>

using namespace std;

int main(int argc, char * argv[])
{
        ifstream data("read.txt");
        char * name = new char[256]; //same as char name[256]
        int age;
        char instr;
    if(data.is_open()){
        data >> instr;
        data.ignore(1, '\n');
        data.getline(name, 256, '\n');
        data >> age;
        cout << "instr -> " << instr
            << endl << "name -> " << name
            << endl << "age -> " << age;
    }
    else
        cout << "could not open file";

    cin.get();
    return 0;
}

---

Quote:

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Originally Posted by codeprada

have a call to the ignore function before your getline so that the '\n' from the previous line won't be parsed by the getline function causing it to read nothing and thus throwing off your data >> age line

---

Gah! All C with some convenient C++ stuff mixed in. Let's fix this.

Code:

---

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>

using namespace std;

int main(int argc, char * argv[])
{
        ifstream data("read.txt");
        std::string name;
        int age;
        char instr;
    if(data.is_open()){
        data >> instr;
        data.ignore(1, '\n');
        getline(name, cin);
        data >> age;
        cout << "instr -> " << instr
            << endl << "name -> " << name
            << endl << "age -> " << age;
    }
    else
        cout << "could not open file";

    cin.get();
    return 0;
}

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This is better. Though it still doesn't handle invalid input.