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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T02:16:53+00:00

I have a massive structure where the entire contents is scalar variables, enumerations, and

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I have a massive structure where the entire contents is scalar variables, enumerations, and arrays of scalars (stack-based) with the exception of one std::string variable.

Now, here’s my question…

Can I memset the structure to 0 for its whole size (like I would if it was simply all scalars), or is that not possible with the std::string being in there? I’m not sure what memset would do to its internal representation.

And if you’re going to say its good/bad please explain why – I’d like to know why it is the way it is 🙂

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    No, you cant, it would overwrite the internal state of the string and make bad things happen. You could wrap all the POD stuff in a seperate struct and put that in your current one, that way you could memset that and let the string default construct.

    Edit: Just to clarify, the string will almost certainly be storing a pointer to the memory its allocated for storage. The string’s constructor will always have run before you can memset it (even if you memset this in the constructor of your type, the string constructor would run first). So you would be overwriting this pointer value, and instead of pointing to its storage, it would a pointer to NULL, or some other almost definitely invalid value.

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