Question

I’m trying to use safe practices in handling input with numbers only in C++, so I use a stringstream object as so:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <sstream>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
    int first, second;
    string input;

    stringstream sstream;

    cout << "First integer: ";
    getline(cin, input);
    sstream.str(input);
    sstream >> first;

    cout << first << endl; //display user input in integers

    cout << "Second integer: ";
    getline(cin, input);
    sstream.str(input);
    sstream >> second;

    cout << second << endl; //display user input in integers

    getline(cin, input); //pause program

    return 0;
}

However, the second time around it seems to give the variable ‘second’ an arbitrary value. This is the output:

First integer: 1
1
Second integer: 2
2293592

If I declare two stringstream objects and use them respectively for both variables it seems to work fine. Does this mean that I cannot re-use a stringstream object in the way I’m trying to do? In my real program I intend to handle much more than two input values from the user, so I just want to make sure if there’s another way instead of making multiple stringstream objects. I doubt it’s of great relevance but I’m on Windows XP and I’m using MinGW as my compiler.

I greatly appreciate any help.

Answer 1

Use sstream.clear(); after sstream >> first;.