Question

I’m getting some strange errors and crashes from my project atm.

It started out with crashes where I got this message:

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::length_error'
  what():  basic_string::_S_create

So I started adding some cerr << “1” etc to try and find at what line it crashed.

Now I’ve found the crash-line, allthough it doesn’t print out the same error code. In fact, it doesn’t say anything, just crash.

The line that causes the crash is this:

Item* tempItem = new Item(name, id2, desc);

Item.h constructor looks like this:

Item(std::string name_, int itemId_, std::string description_ = "") 
: name(name_), itemId(itemId_), description(description_){}

and the variables I’m sending in looks like this:

string name = "Frying pan";
int id2 = 1;
string desc = "It's all rusty";

any ideas? (If you need more code just tell me what you need and I’ll edit it in)

EDIT
some updated info:

name.max_size() = 1073741820
name.length() = 9

desc.max_size() = 1073741820
desc.length() = 14

EDIT2
I’ve now tried creating the Item-objects with hard coding the variable values right before construction as such:

name = "itemName";
desc = "itemDesc";
id2 = 2;

and it STILL crashes right at the line:

Item* tempItem = new Item(name, id2, desc);

Answer 1

There is a limit on how long a std::string may be. std::length_error is thrown when that length is exceeded. The actual limit depends on your compiler’s implementation of the Standard Template Library.

From the C++ standard (19.2.4):

The class length_error defines the type of objects thrown as
exceptions to report an attempt to produce an object whose length
exceeds its maximum allowable size.

You can check the maximum allowable string size by reading the value of string::max_size.