Strings library
The C++ strings library includes support for three general types of strings:
- std::basic_string - a templated class designed to manipulate strings of any character type.
- std::basic_string_view (C++17) - a lightweight non-owning read-only view into a subsequence of a string.
- Null-terminated strings - arrays of characters terminated by a special null character.
std::basic_string
The templated class std::basic_string generalizes how sequences of characters are manipulated and stored. String creation, manipulation, and destruction are all handled by a convenient set of class methods and related functions.
Several specializations of std::basic_string are provided for commonly-used types:
Defined in header
<string> | |
Type | Definition |
std::string | std::basic_string<char> |
std::wstring | std::basic_string<wchar_t> |
std::u8string (since C++20) | std::basic_string<char8_t> |
std::u16string (since C++11) | std::basic_string<char16_t> |
std::u32string (since C++11) | std::basic_string<char32_t> |
std::basic_string_viewThe templated class std::basic_string_view provides a lightweight object that offers read-only access to a string or a part of a string using an interface similar to the interface of std::basic_string. Several specializations of std::basic_string_view are provided for commonly-used types:
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(since C++17) |
Null-terminated strings
Null-terminated strings are arrays of characters that are terminated by a special null character. C++ provides functions to create, inspect, and modify null-terminated strings.
There are three types of null-terminated strings:
Additional support
std::char_traits
The string library also provides class template std::char_traits that defines types and functions for std::basic_string and std::basic_string_view (since C++17). The following specializations are defined:
Defined in header <string>
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template<> class char_traits<char>; template<> class char_traits<wchar_t>; |
(since C++20) (since C++11) (since C++11) |
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Conversions and classification
The localizations library provides support for string conversions (e.g. std::wstring_convert or std::toupper) as well as functions that classify characters (e.g. std::isspace or std::isdigit).