Question

I had a need to do a case insensitive find and found the following code which did the trick

bool ci_equal(char ch1, char ch2)
{
    return toupper((unsigned char)ch1) == toupper((unsigned char)ch2);
}

size_t ci_find(const string& str1, const string& str2)
{
    string::const_iterator pos = std::search(str1. begin ( ), str1. end ( ), str2.
    begin ( ), str2. end ( ), ci_equal);
    if (pos == str1. end ( ))
        return string::npos;
    else
        return pos - str1. begin ( );
}

That got me to wondering what it would take to make this a member function of ‘string’ so it could be called like this:

string S="abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv";
string F="GHI";

S.ci_find(F);

I realize that there are many problems with case conversions in non-English languages but that’s not the question I’m interested in.

Being a neophyte, I quickly got lost among containers and templates.

Is there anyway to do this? Could someone point to me an example of something similar?

Answer 1

std::string is not made to be extended.

You could encapsulate an std::string into a class of yours and set those member functions in that class.