C++ Primer Plus

Other istream Methods

Other istream methods besides the ones discussed so far include read(), peek(), gcount(), and putback(). The read() function reads a given number of bytes and stores them in the specified location. For example, the following statements read 144 characters from the standard input and place them in the gross array:

char gross[144];cin.read(gross, 144);

Unlike getline() and get(), read() does not append a null character to input, so it doesn’t convert input to string form. The read() method is not intended for keyboard input. Instead, it is most often used in conjunction with the ostream write() function for file input and output. The method’s return type is istream &, so it can be concatenated as follows:

char gross[144]; ...