How do I flush the cin buffer?

Question

How do I clear the cin buffer in C++?

Answer 1

I prefer:

cin.clear();
fflush(stdin);

There's an example where cin.ignore just doesn't cut it, but I can't think of it at the moment. It was a while ago when I needed to use it (with Mingw).

However, fflush(stdin) is undefined behavior according to the standard. fflush() is only meant for output streams. fflush(stdin) only seems to work as expected on Windows (with GCC and MS compilers at least) as an extension to the C standard.

So, if you use it, your code isn't going to be portable.

See Using fflush(stdin).

Also, see http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?s=9129c7bd6e5c8fd67eb332126b59b54c&p=452568&postcount=1 for an alternative.