Strings library

 

C++

Compiler support

Freestanding and hosted

Language

Standard library

Standard library headers

Named requirements

Feature test macros (C++20)

Language support library

Concepts library (C++20)

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Strings library

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Iterators library

Ranges library (C++20)

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Regular expressions library (C++11)

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Technical specifications

Symbols index

External libraries

 

Strings library

Null-terminated strings

Byte strings

Multibyte strings

Wide strings

Classes

basic_string

basic_string_view (C++17)

char_traits

 

The C++ strings library includes support for two general types of strings:

• std::basic_string - a templated class designed to manipulate strings of any character type.
• 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::u16string	std::basic_string<char16_t>
std::u32string	std::basic_string<char32_t>

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:

• null-terminated byte strings
• null-terminated multibyte strings
• null-terminated wide 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. The following specializations are defined:

Defined in header <string>
template<> class char_traits<char>; template<> class char_traits<wchar_t>; template<> class char_traits<char16_t>; template<> class char_traits<char32_t>;		(since C++11) (since C++11)

See also

C documentation for Strings library