cin.eof() functionality

Question

I understand that cin.eof() tests the stream format. And while giving input, end of character is not reached when there is wrong in the input. I tested this on my MSV C++ 2010 and am not understanding the strange results. No matter what I give the input, I am getting Format Error message that is present in the program.

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
    int i;
    cin>> i;

    if(!cin.eof())
    {
        cout<< "\n Format Error \n";
    }
    else
    {
        cout<< "\n Correct Input \n";
    }

    getchar();
    return 0;
}

Results I expected:

Values for i =

1. 10 => Correct Input but the output is Format Error
2. 12a => Format Error

Could someone explain where I am going wrong. Thanks.

Answer 1

std::cin.eof() tests for end-of-file (hence eof), not for errors. For error checking use !std::cin.good(), the built-in conversion operator (if(std::cin)) or the boolean negation operator (if(!std::cin)).

Answer 2

For an input stream to enter the EOF state you have to actually make an attempt to read past the end of stream. I.e. it is not enough to reach the end-of-stream location in the stream, it is necessary to actually try to read a character past the end. This attempt will result in EOF state being activated, which in turn will make cin.eof() return true.

However, in your case you are not only not doing that, you (most likely) are not even reaching the end of stream. If you input your 10 from the keyboard, you probably finished the input by pressing the [Enter] key. This resulted in a new-line character being added to the input stream. So, what you are actually parsing with >> operator in this case is actually a 10\n sequence. Since you requested an int value from the stream, it only reads the numerical characters from the stream, i.e. it reads 1 and 0, but it stops at \n. That \n remains in the stream. You never read it. So, obviously, your code never reaches the end-of-file position in the stream. You have to reason to expect cin.eof() to become true in such case.