User Input Strings
It is possible to use the extraction operator >> on cin to store a string entered by a user:
Example
string firstName;
cout << "Type your first name: ";
cin >>
firstName;
// get user input from the keyboard
cout << "Your name is: " <<
firstName;
// Type your first name: John
// Your name is: John
However, cin considers a space (whitespace, tabs, etc) as a terminating character, which means that it can only store a single word (even if you type many words):
Example
string fullName;
cout << "Type your full name: ";
cin >>
fullName;
cout << "Your name is: " <<
fullName;
// Type your full name: John Doe
// Your name is: John
From the example above, you would expect the program to print "John Doe", but it only prints "John". That's why, when working with strings, we often use the getline() function to read a line of text. It takes cin as the first parameter, and the string variable as second:
Example
string fullName;
cout << "Type your full name: ";
getline (cin, fullName);
cout << "Your name is: " <<
fullName;
// Type your full name: John Doe
// Your name is: John Doe
