cstring

cstring is a C++ immutable C-string (aka const char array) with reference counting.

It is a pointer to chars where the pointed memory is prefixed by the ref-counter (4-bytes) and the string length (4-bytes).

Features: :

• It is a const char * having sizeof(cstring) = 8
• Behaves like a std::string
• Reference counting integrated reduce the number of indirections
• Includes string length harnessing the full power of string_view
• Easy debug (object points to string content)
• Additional utility functions (contains(), trim(), etc)

Main drawbacks:

• Immutable content (we cannot change the string content)
• 8 additional bytes are allocated (ref-counter + length + eventual padding)
• No Small String Optimization (SSO)
• String length and ref-count limited to 4'294'967'295
• Stateful allocators (sizeof(allocator) > 0) not supported

Usage

Drop off cstring.hpp in your project and start using the cstring.

Read cstring-example.cpp file to see how to use it.

#include "cstring.hpp"
...
// just use it like a const std::string
gto::cstring str1 = "hello world!"
std::cout << "Length of '" << str << "' is " << str.length() << std::endl;

Testing

# example
make example

# unit tests
make tests

# code coverage
make coverage
firefox coverage/index.html &

Contributors

Name	Contribution
Gerard Torrent	Initial work Code maintainer
Matthieu M.	Code review

License

This project is licensed under the GNU LGPL v3 License - see the LICENSE file for details.