std::cin.getline( ) vs. std::cin
When should std::cin.getline() be used? What does it differ from std::cin?
Answer
Let's take std::cin.getline() apart. First, there's std::. This is the namespace in which the standard library lives. It has hundreds of types, functions and objects.
std::cin is such an object. It's the standard character input object, defined in <iostream>. It has some methods of its own, but you can also use it with many free functions. Most of these methods and functions are ways to get one or more characters from the standard input.
Finally, .getline() is one such method of std::cin (and other similar objects). You tell it how many characters it should get from the object on its left side (std::cin here), and where to put those characters. The precise number of characters can vary: .getline() will stop in three cases:
1. The end of a line is reached
2. There are no characters left in the input (doesn't happen normally on std::cin as you can keep typing)
3. The maximum number of characters is read.
There are other methods and functions that can be used with the std::cin object, e.g.
std::string s;
int i;
std::cin >> s; // Read a single word from std::cin
std::cin >> i; // Read a single number from std::cin
std::getline(std::cin, s); // Read an entire line (up to \n) from std::cin
std::cin.ignore(100); // Ignore the next 100 characters of std::cin