Original Post
Ok, there''s one thing that bothers me about this combination. When you use a string that contains spaces, you lose the symmetry between the << and the >> operators. Example: if I use << to write "this is a string" to a stream, it will take 4 uses of the >> operator to get that string back. So, in an application where you write arbitrary strings to a stream, there is no way of being able to load them back reliably. An std::string is capable of storing the \0 character, as well as \n etc. This means you can''t assume the string will be null-terminated (you wouldn''t want it to be that way in a text file anyway), nor can you use getline with the default of \n since you might have newlines within the string itself. I suppose you have to choose an arbitrary method for yourself: either writing out the length of the string first, like Pascal stores its strings, or choosing a delimiting character.
Personally, I find it very surprising that there is apparently no standard way of doing this provided by the standard library.
My personal solution goes something like this:
1) Pick an arbitrary delimiter. I use a tilde (~) purely because that is what I was used to from my MUD background.
2) For each instance of the delimiter character in the string you want to save, double it up.
3) Write the string as processed by step 2, plus a delimiter character at the end.
4) To read the string, you call getline with the delimiter you specified.
5) If the next character in the stream is also the delimiter, that means it has been doubled up by step 2 above, so add the delimiter character to the string, and repeat from step 4, appending to the string.
6) Otherwise, you''ve reached the end of the string and you''re done.
This works for me in all situations I have used it in, but I can see one where it would not: if there were 2 strings in a row, and the second one actually began with the delimiter character. It could be possible to get around this by ensuring there was some whitespace after the delimiter at the end of a string, but then this precludes me from being able to have whitespace at the start of a string! Do you see the complications?
So, I''m very interested to know how any of you have approached (or sidestepped!) this problem. String and stream handling is very important to me in everything I do and so if there''s an ''optimal'' solution out there, I want to hear of it! 
