While loop with try catch fails at bad cin input

Question

I can\'t seem to figure out why this falls into a loop after getting non-int input. I\'ve tried cin.flush(), which doesn\'t seem to exist, cin.clear(), which seems like it s

Answer 1

Exceptions should be used to handle exceptional, unexpected situations. Incorrect input from a user is neither unexpected nor exceptional -- it's more or less the norm. Personally, I tend to just ignore most bad input completely (when it can't be prevented). When (and only when) they enter something unusable repeatedly is it even worth pointing it out to them. As such, I'd tend to write the code something like:

char ch;
int attempts = 0;

std::cout << "Please enter the first number: ";
do { 
    cin >> ch;
    attempts++;
    if (attempts > 5)
        std::cerr << "The only allowable inputs are '0' through '9'\n";            
} while (cin.good() && !isdigit(ch));
int first_number = ch - '0';

This reads the input as a character, so it's always removed from the input stream. Then it attempts to validate the input, and if it fails, attempts to read again. Of course, you might want/need to get a little more elaborate, such as reading an entire line, attempting to convert it to a number, and reading another line if that fails.