getline reads characters from an input stream and places them into a string:

[edit]Parameters

[edit]Return value

input

[edit]Notes

When consuming whitespace-delimited input (e.g.int n;std::cin>> n;) any whitespace that follows, including a newline character, will be left on the input stream. Then when switching to line-oriented input, the first line retrieved withgetline will be just that whitespace. In the likely case that this is unwanted behaviour, possible solutions include:

• An explicit extraneous initial call togetline.
• Removing consecutive whitespace withstd::cin>>std::ws.
• Ignoring all leftover characters on the line of input withcin.ignore(std::numeric_limits<std::streamsize>::max(),'\n');.

[edit]Example

#include <iostream>#include <sstream>#include <string> int main(){// greet the userstd::string name;std::cout<<"What is your name? ";    std::getline(std::cin, name);std::cout<<"Hello "<< name<<", nice to meet you.\n"; // read file line by linestd::istringstream input;    input.str("1\n2\n3\n4\n5\n6\n7\n");int sum=0;for(std::string line; std::getline(input, line);)        sum+=std::stoi(line);std::cout<<"\nThe sum is "<< sum<<".\n\n"; // use separator to read parts of the linestd::istringstream input2;    input2.str("a;b;c;d");for(std::string line; std::getline(input2, line,';');)std::cout<< line<<'\n';}

What is your name? John Q. PublicHello John Q. Public, nice to meet you. The sum is 28. abcd

[edit]Defect reports

The following behavior-changing defect reports were applied retroactively to previously published C++ standards.

[edit]See also

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