C-Style Strings

C-style strings are character arrays that end with a null terminator (\0). They come from the C language and remain available in C++ mainly for compatibility.

Unlike the safer and more flexible std::string class, C-style strings require careful manual handling of size and termination. Many common errors (buffer overflows, missing terminator) stem from incorrect bounds management.

C-style strings can be declared and initialized in different ways:

In C++, string literals have type const char[N]. You cannot modify them.

The C header <cstring> provides standard functions for manipulating C-style strings. They all expect a null-terminated string.

When you must stay with C APIs, prefer sized operations and ensure termination yourself. Alternatively, use std::snprintf.

You can construct std::string from a C string, and you can obtain a C string from std::string via c_str().