Question

Is there a more elegant way to initialise the second string with a single char from the first string? Eg. without resorting to the string ( size_t n, char c ) constructor?

string first = "foobar";
string second(string(1, first[0]));

Answer 1

The constructor you mention is the way to create a string from one character, so there won’t be a significantly more elegant way. However, there’s no need to create and copy/move a temporary:

string second(1, first[0]);

Alternatively, you could construct from a substring of first:

string second(first, 0, 1);

In C++11, you can use an initialiser list:

string second {first[0]};