i would hope someone can modify my code as its so buggy. sometime its work, sometime it dont.. so let me explain more.. Text file data is as below Line3D, [70, -120, -3], [-29, 1, 268] Line3D, [25, -69, -33], [-2, -41, 58] To read the above line.. i use the following char buffer[30]; cout << "Please enter filename: "; cin.ignore(); getline(cin,filename); readFile.open(filename.c_str()); //if successfully open if(readFile.is_open()) { //record counter set to 0 numberOfRecords = 0; while(readFile.good()) { //input stream get line by line readFile.getline(buffer,20,','); if(strstr(buffer,"Point3D")) { Point3D point3d_tmp; readFile>>point3d_tmp; // and so on... Then i did a overload on the ifstream for Line3d ifstream& operator>>(ifstream &input,Line3D &line3d) { int x1,y1,z1,x2,y2,z2; //get x1 input.ignore(2); input>>x1; //get y1 input.ignore(); input>>y1; //get z1 input.ignore(); input>>z1; //get x2 input.ignore(4); input>>x2; //get y2 input.ignore(); input>>y2; //get z2 input.ignore(); input>>z2; input.ignore(2); Point3D pt1(x1,y1,z1); Point3D pt2(x2,y2,z2); line3d.setPt1(pt1); line3d.setPt2(pt2); line3d.setLength(); } But the issue is the record work sometime and sometime it dont.. what i mean is if at this point //i add a cout cout << x1 << y1 << z1; cout << x2 << y2 << z2; //its works! Point3D pt1(x1,y1,z1); Point3D pt2(x2,y2,z2); line3d.setPt1(pt1); line3d.setPt2(pt2); line3d.setLength(); but if i take away the cout it dont work. how do i change my cin.ignore() so the data can be handle properly , consider number range is -999 to 999