i need to know how to write a simple program that reads ascII characters in c++

I have this assignment and we are dealing with bitwise operators

The assignment that i cant figgure out is i have to create a program that reads four ascII characters from the keyboard and packs them into a single four byte integer. then display the value as hex and output them in reverse order with low byte first.

a simple "brute force" starting point:

char c1,c2,c3,c4;

c1 = getch();
c2 = getch();
c3 = getch();
c4 = getch();

unsigned int pack;

pack = c1 | (c2<<8) | .....   // etcetera

can you just show me how you can use cout<< and cin>> to get the information and ouput it in hex

sorry i am a beginner and not to familiar with C++

to display an hex number:

int yournumber;
// some processing here
cout <<hex << yournumber;

To trap keys use getch() as shown, or use:

string buffer;
cin.getline(buffer);

To read an entire buffer and process later.

tedschnieders,

two ways of doing this easy:

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{

     cout << "Please enter four ASCII characters: ";
     char Num[500];  //<--- You must dimension proper size
     gets(Num);

     // do something ...


     // integer array
     int iNum[500];
     for ( int i = 0; i < strlen ( Num ); i++ )
     {
          iNum[i] = Num[i];
     }

     for ( i = 0; i < strlen ( Num ); i++ )
     {
          cout << "0x" << hex << iNum[i] << endl;
     }

     return 0;

}

OR

#include <iostream>
#include <stdio.h>

using namespace std;

int main()
{

     cout << "Please enter four ASCII characters: ";
     char Num[500];  //<--- You must dimension proper size
     gets(Num);

     // do something ...

     for ( int i = 0; i < strlen ( Num ); i++ )
     {
          printf ( "0x%x\n", Num[i] );
     }
     return 0;

}