Strings

Published Aug 4, 2021Updated Aug 13, 2022

Strings are objects that represent sequences of characters. In C++, the two ways to create strings are with the string class or with C-style character strings.

String Class

The standard string class provides support for strings in C++.

std::string welcome = "Hi";
std::string user_name = "@sonny";
std::string message = "Good nite! 😇";

C-Style Character Strings

The C-style character string originated from the C language and continues to be supported within C++.

In C, the string is actually an array of characters, followed by a null character '\0'.

char message[] = "Howdy";

So here’s the memory presentation:

Character |   'H'    'o'    'w'    'd'    'y'   '\0'
Index     |    0      1      2      3      4      5
Address   |  23451  23452  23453  23454  23455  23456

Strings

.find(): Returns the index of the first occurrence of the specified string or character.
.length(): Returns the length of the string it is called on.
.replace(): Returns a string with a portion replaced by another string.
.size(): Returns the size of the string it is called on.
.substr(): Returns a portion of a string specified by a starting position and length.
strcmp(): Compares two strings and returns an integer value.
strcpy(): Copies one string into another and returns the newly copied string.
strtok(): Breaks a C-style string into a series of tokens using a list of delimiters.