Before you start avoiding std::string, note that the article said that one of the problems was that they went from std::string to C-strings and then allocated a new std::string. This often happens when you use both kind of strings in your code. The takeaway is to stick either to C strings or use std::strings with reference passing, dropping down to c_str() when needed.
Thanks, that was a lot more helpful response :) I think the most confused I've been so far (coming from a PHP background) was all the different types of strings!
No that's BS. `std::string` should be used where ever it is applicable.
The whole issue that this post about chrome was talking about was dealing with a poor usage of `std::string`, such as passing c_str() to then go and construct another string instead of passing by const ref.
Or building a set of `std::string` to simply check if a value exists.
That's just shit code, not an issue with `std::string`.
There's a right way to do it. It's not the obvious way. Berating people for coming to terms with that isn't helpful.
It's not their fault that C++ only really supports std::string out of the box. What are the alternatives?
1. const std::string & : what if I have a vector<char>?
2. const char * : what if it's not null terminated?
3. const char * and size_t : Better, but what if I have a deque<char>?
4. const char * start, const char * stop : Better because you can write algorithms around this, but still, doesn't help with deque<char>?
5. template on START_ITER and STOP_ITER : The best we have now if you need an extremely general solution. But I hope writing your implementation in headers is fine.
Definitely, and where `std::string`'s interface is not enough, use thrid party libs which work on std::strings, like boost string algoriths, std regex, or uftcpp.
