Question

for example I have project with 200 classes (200 headers and 200 compilatioin units),
each my class has members which hold some strings, mean I have to include string header from STL into each my header.

from another side I know I wouldn’t need most of string class functionality(it’s metods etc) in my compilation units.
that means each my compilation unit will have whole string class included but all I need is keyword “string”.

compilation will take much longer! I will compile string class 200 times!

is it better in this case to use just char keyword or make some custom string class which will not be so big as string class is?

thanks.

Answer 1

You really should use std::string, because of many reasons:

• it is hard to write secure safe code with c-strings, but it is much easier with std::string
• the time it takes to compile <string> is tiny compared to total compilation time for a normal project
• should you really ever have to worry about the time it takes to compile the string header, you can always start using precompiled headers
• you get many functions for manipulating and searching in strings for free when you use std::string
• you don’t really write c++ if you don’t use the std library