Question

In C++ I am trying to get size of a string say “gibbs”;

When I am using sizeof function it is returning me size less then one of actual size.

I have below code :

 string s = "gibbs";
 cout << sizeof(s) <<endl;

and output is : 4. I guess it should be 5.

How to fix this issue. We can add +1 always to return of sizeof but will that be perfect solution ?

Answer 1

sizeof(s) gives you the size of the object s, not the length of the string stored in the object s.

You need to write this:

cout << s.size() << endl;

Note that std::basic_string (and by extension std::string) has a size() member function. std::basic_string also has a length member function which returns same value as size(). So you could write this as well:

cout << s.length() << endl;

I personally prefer the size() member function, because the other containers from the standard library such as std::vector, std::list, std::map, and so on, have size() member functions but not length(). That is, size() is a uniform interface for the standard library container class templates. I don’t need to remember it specifically for std::string (or any other container class template). The member function std::string::length() is a deviation in that sense.