cin Create Array but ignore certain Symbols on CIN

Question

Say for example i wish to cin a set of 6 numbers. But the user will cin them in this format.

[1 2 3 4 5 6]

Is there a way to design it so that the [ ] are ignored or not placed into the array which i created?

Like if were to enter 1 2 3 4 5 6 everything would be fine. If i were to enter [1 2 3 4 5 6] obviously i would have problems. Is there a way to define that [] should be ignored or not even inputted into the array in input?

Below im using a overloading operator where i cin information. The first two values are just the dimensions of my 2d array. So if i was to enter [2 2 5 3 5 3] it would only input the values after 2 2 which are the size of the array i setup. But i need to handle these symbols [ ] so they dont conflict. What would be the best way to fix this up?

friend istream& operator>>(istream& is, Array<T> &array)
{
    int rowX, colY;
    is >> rowX;
    is >> colY;

    array.create(rowX, colY);

    for(int i = 0; i<array.numRowX(); i++)
        for(int j = 0; j<array.numColY(); j++)
        {
            T data;
            is >> data;
            array.setarray(i, j, data);
        }

    return is;
}

Answer 1

You can use a variable to read input which you want to ignore. If you are simply skipping single characters, something like this should work:

char ignoreChar;

is >> ignoreChar; // Should be a '['

// for loop goes here

is >> ignore; // Shoudl be a ']'

You might want to add if statements to make sure the ignored character is in fact what you expect it to be.

Alternatively, you can read in a whole line as a string and extract the information you want from there. This is called string parsing.