C++ How to Program, 10/e

... 10 characters of the alphabet.

The read member function inputs a designated number of characters into a built-in array of chars. If fewer than the designated number of characters are read, failbit is set. Section 13.8 shows how to determine whether failbit has been set. Member function gcount reports the number of characters read by the last input operation.

Figure 13.5 demonstrates istream member functions read and gcount, and ostream member function write. The program inputs 20 characters (from a longer input sequence) into the array buffer with read (line 12), determines the number of characters input with gcount (line 16) and outputs the characters in buffer with write (line 16).

Fig. 13.5 Unformatted I/O using read, gcount and write.