Re: order of istream_iterator and cout statements

From:
Victor Bazarov <v.bazarov@comcast.invalid>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 04 May 2010 08:38:04 -0400
Message-ID:
<hrp4fe$4dr$1@news.eternal-september.org>
On 5/4/2010 8:26 AM, subramanian100in@yahoo.com, India wrote:

[..] consider the following program y.cpp:

#include<cstdlib>
#include<iostream>
#include<string>
#include<iterator>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
         string x("test string");
         istream_iterator<string> isi(cin);
         cout<< "x = "<< x<< endl;
         cout<< "string entered: "<< isi->c_str()<< endl;

         return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

In this program, the istream_iterator and the first cout statements
are interchanged.

I compiled this program as
g++ -std=c++98 -pedantic -Wall -Wextra y.cpp

When I ran this program, it first waited for user input. For this I
entered:
sample

It then printed:
x = test string
string entered: sample

Why doesn't the second program y.cpp behave similar to the first
program x.cpp ?


For some reason I am thinking you're not looking for a simple answer
like, "because they are two different programs"...

 > For the second program also, I expected the following

to be printed first:
x = test string


Why? The 'istream_iterator' is defined like this:

    24.5.1 Class template istream_iterator [lib.istream.iterator]
1 istream_iterator reads (using operator>>) successive elements
   from the input stream for which it was constructed. After it is
   constructed, and every time ++ is used, the iterator reads and
   stores a value of T.

That means that it reads one value from the stream right after
construction. You can think that the reading of one 'std::string' is
done as the *last step of initializing* your stream with 'cin'.

This should have been followed by user input


"Should"? What makes you think that? What *source* do you use?

 > and then finally the

following should have been printed:

string entered: whatever user gave as input

But this doesn't happen with the second program y.cpp. What is the
difference between the two programs ?


Uh... Hello? Can't you tell?

 > I am unable to understand why

the interchanging of the istream_iterator statement and first cout
statement causes different program output.


RTFM, I guess.

V
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