getchar vs. cin

[Kristo]

Is there a preference between getchar and cin for reading one character
at a time from stdin? TC++PL chapter 6 has a parser that uses getchar,
but I suspect that the purists will say to always go with cin.
Naturally, the former is probably faster. However, in the context of
writing a parser, I think istream's skipws and noskipws manipulators
could be useful. Opinions?

Kristo

 

[Thomas Matthews]

Is there a preference between getchar and cin for reading one character
at a time from stdin? TC++PL chapter 6 has a parser that uses getchar,
but I suspect that the purists will say to always go with cin.
Naturally, the former is probably faster. However, in the context of
writing a parser, I think istream's skipws and noskipws manipulators
could be useful. Opinions?

Kristo

All depends on the features you want in your
stream handler.

The C++ streams have better exception handling
than the C versions; however, the C versions have
less overhead than the C++ streams.

The C++ streams are more adaptable to different
situations than the C streams.

You would need more information about the I/O
to make a good decision. On some platforms, you
may be using O.S. functionality rather than
the C++ streams.

Text applications have different requirements than
windowing, I/O to devices, or file I/O.

--
Thomas Matthews

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