c++ char arrays, use in cin.getline()

Question

I have the following code:

char myText[256];
cin.getline(myText,256);

Why exactly do I have to pass a character array to cin.getline() and not a string?

I have read that in general it is better to use strings than character arrays. Should I then convert a character array to a string after retrieving input with cin.getline(), if that is possible?

Answer 1

You are using the member method of istream. In this case cin. This function's details can be found here :

http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/io/basic_istream/getline

However you could use std::getline

Which uses a string instead of a char array. It's easier to use string since they know their sizes, they auto grow etc. and you don't have to worry about the null terminating character and so on. Also it is possible to convert a char array to a string by using the appropriate string contructor.

Answer 2

That's an unfortunate historical artifact, I believe.

You can however, use the std::getline free function instead.

std::string myText;
std::getline(std::cin,myText);