Re: std::vector<char> instead of std::string, where are the string searching functions?

From:

"Daniel T." <daniel_t@earthlink.net>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++.moderated

Date:

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:38:17 CST

Message-ID:

<2315bf42-bfd8-4588-9b42-3d975c73e363@k41g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>

On Feb 26, 5:29 pm, Andrew <marlow.and...@googlemail.com> wrote:

I am working with some legacy code that is in the process of changing
to use std::vector<char> instead of a C-style char array. The C-style
char array is currently allocated using new char [n]. This array is
passed to various C string functions such as strstr, strncmp etc. I
need to do the same work but with a std::vector. I googled around for
a bit to see if I could find anyone who had already done this work but
my search revealed nothing. I wonder if some kind person could point
me in the right direction.

I suggest you look at the functions defined in <algorithm>. For
example:

strstr --> search
strncmp and strcmp --> vectors have the full complement of op==, op!=,
op<, op>, op<= and op>=.

etc.

And for performance critical apps such as the one I am working on, it
is common advice to use std::vector<char> instead of std::string or C-
style char arrays. In the past I often seen this advice given out
(it's even in More Effective STL) but without the utility functions to
back it up I can see people ignoring this advice.

Unless you are working with unsigned chars, I think you can ignore
this advice. There was a time when the advice made sense because there
were several different implementations of std::string and you had no
way of knowing what performance tradeoffs the implementers took, but
with modern compilers, they pretty much all implement std::string as
if it were a vector of char

--
[ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ]
[ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ]