C++ Standard Library, The: A Tutorial and Reference, 2nd Edition

Chapter 13. Strings

This chapter presents the string types of the C++ standard library. It describes the basic class template basic_string<> and its standard specializations string, wstring, u16string, and u32string.

Strings can be a source of confusion because it is not clear what the term string means. Does it mean an ordinary character array of type char* (with or without the const qualifier)? Is it an instance of class string<>? Or is it a general name for objects that are kinds of strings? In this chapter, I use the term string for objects of one of the string types in the C++ standard library: string, wstring, u16string, or u32string. For “ordinary strings” of type char* or const char*, I use the term C-string.

Note that with C++98 the ...