DaWei

cin.clear could definitely be necessary if the stream is in a fail state for any reason. It's not even uncommon. If input were directed, say, to an integer variable, and the user struck a key or key sequence that couldn't be properly converted, a failure condition would occur. When this happens, the stream will not function properly until the failure condition is cleared. This is a quite common topic in the C++ forum. Streams should always be checked after use to make sure that a failure has not occurred. Any thing less is amateurish, if one hasn't discovered the facts yet, or schlocky programming if one has, but chooses to ignore the possibility, anyway.

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Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers