14.3.9 Handling Input Errors

By convention, an extractor whose first argument has a nonzero error state should not extract anything from the input stream and should not clear any error bits. An extractor that fails should set at least one error bit.

As with output errors, you should check the error state periodically and take some action, such as aborting, when you find a nonzero state. The ! operator tests the error state of an iostream. For example, the following code produces an input error if you type alphabetic characters for input:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <iostream.h>
void error (const char* message) {
     cerr << message << "\n";
     exit(1);
}
int main() {
     cout << "Enter some characters: ";
     int bad;
     cin >> bad;
     if (!cin) error("aborted due to input error");
     cout << "If you see this, not an error." << "\n";
     return 0;
}

Class ios has member functions that you can use for error handling. See the man pages for details.