The following code works with gcc 4.4.
But gcc 4.7 will give assertion failure.
#include
#include
#include
According to C++11 section 27.7.2.3p40,
if
fail() != false, returnspos_type(-1)
So gcc 4.7 has the correct behavior for the current version of C++ (assuming that peek() at end of stream causes failbit to be set, and it does during sentry construction, since skipws is set by default).
Looking at the wording of C++03, it is the same. 27.6.1.3p37. So the behavior you describe in gcc 4.4 is a bug.