What is a C++ string?

A string in C++ is an ordered sequence of characters.

There are three possible ways to create a sequence of characters in C++, a ‘string’ is just one of these ways:

  1. A simple array of characters is just like any other array; but it has no special properties that other arrays may have.
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  1. A null terminated string, also called a C-string, consists of an array of characters terminated by the null character ‘\0’. Strings of these forms can be created and dealt with using <cstring> library. Note that the null character may not be the last character in the C-string array.

  1. A C++ string is an object that is a part of the C++ standard library. It is an instance of a “class” data type, used for convenient manipulation of sequences of characters. To use the string class in your program, the <string> header must be included. The standard library string class can be accessed through the std namespace.
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C++ strings provide a great deal of functionality and usability to the programmer. Despite the fact that all the tasks you might want to, theoretically,perform on a string can also be performed using C-strings; it’s generally far more convenient and intuitive to just use C++ strings.

Some functions for dealing with C++ strings and C-Strings are shown in the codes below:

Printing a String

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main() {
  string myStr = "Hello"; //initilization
  
  cout << myStr << endl; //printing
  return 0;
}

Calculate Length of a String

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main() {
  string myStr = "Hello"; //initilization
  
  //calculate length
  cout << "myStr's length is " << myStr.length() << endl;
  cout << "myStr's size is " << myStr.size() << endl;
  return 0;
}

Concatenating two Strings

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main() {
  string myStr1 = "Hello"; //initilization
  string myStr2 = "World";
  
  //string concatenation
  string myStr3 = myStr1 + myStr2;
  cout << "myStr1 + myStr2 = " << myStr3 << endl;
  return 0;
}

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