How do you read a line from a file to a string?

I'm trying to read a file with a loop and put each line in a cstring. Here's my code:

string messageBuffer;
while(!messageFile.eof())
 { messageBuffer = "";
   getline(messageFile, messageBuffer);
   if(messageBuffer == "")
    { messageBuffer = "\n"; }
   sendToServer(s, messageBuffer, NO);
 }
This works fine for most lines, and doesn't save the \n to the cstring, just like it's supposed to, but when it gets to a blank line, where the \n is the only thing on the line, it totally skips it and goes on to the next line. If my file's like this:

Test 1

Test 2

-and I read it with this loop, it ends up being like:

Test 1
Test 2

-I tried using the cstring function:
messageBuffer.read_line(messageFile);
instead of:
getline(messageFile, messageBuffer);

-it gives the exact same results, which makes me think that the cstring class won't let it return just nothing, which what it should do if a \n is stripped off a line w/ just \n.

I tried this exact same loop using char messageBuffer[100] and char functions instead, and it works perfectly.

Also, tabs seem to be stripped out when they're saved to a string as well. Does anyone know what's wrong? Thanks.