C++ iostream Library - cin Object

Description

The object of class istream that represents the standard input stream oriented to narrow characters (of type char). It corresponds to the C stream stdin. The standard input stream is a source of characters determined by the environment. It is generally assumed to be input from an external source, such as the keyboard or a file.

Object of class istream, characters can be retrieved either as formatted data using the extraction operator (operator>>) or as unformatted data, using member functions such as read.

Declaration

Following is the declaration for std::cin.

extern istream cin;

cin is tied to the standard output stream cout (see ios::tie), which indicates that cout's buffer is flushed (see ostream::flush) before each i/o operation performed on cin.

The program should not mix input operations on cin with input operations on wcin (or with other wide-oriented input operations on stdin): Once an input operation has been performed on either, the standard input stream acquires an orientation (either narrow or wide) that can only be safely changed by calling freopen on stdin.