Strings in C++

Strings is a types of data type that can store non-numerical value that are longer than one single character.

The C++ language library provides support for strings through the standard stringclass.

This is not a fundamental type, but it behaves in a similar way as fundamental types do in its most basic usage.

A first difference with fundamental data types is that in order to declare and use objects (variables) of this type we need to include an additional header file in our source code: <string> and have access to the std namespace (which we already had in all our previous programs thanks to the using namespace statement).

// initialization of variables
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main(){
  string mystring = "This is a string"; 
  cout<< mystring;

  return 0;
}

As you may see in the previous example, strings can be initialized with any valid string literal just like numerical type variables can be initialized to any valid numerical literal. Both initialization formats are valid with strings:

string mystring = "This is a string";
string mystring ("This is a string");

Strings can also perform all the other basic operations that fundamental data types can, like being declared without an initial value and being assigned values during execution:

// initialization of variables
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main(){
  string mystring; 

  mystring = "This is the initial string content"; 
  cout<< mystring<<endl;

  mystring = "This is a different string content";
  cout<< mystring<<endl;
  
  return 0;
}

Now that you have learned about Strings in C++ programming. Lets learn something about Constants in C++ in the next section.