bug in iostreams???

[Martin v. Loewis]

>    The obvious problem is that after reading 4 bytes from
>    the input stream buffer the rest of the chars are gotten
>    rid of.
> 
>    Any ideas for a fix?   :>

No, the problem is that the stream has failed if you can't read a full
line. To read the rest, you have to write

   if ( cin.rdbuf()->in_avail() )
   {
     if (cin.fail())
       cin.clear(cin.rdstate() & ~ios::failbit);
      cin.getline( buff, cin.rdbuf()->in_avail() );
      cout << "what remains is \"" << buff << "\"" << endl;
   }

Regards,
Martin