Text data is commonly represented as a sequence or string of characters laid out contiguously in memory and terminated by a special marker (the null terminator). While the actual data type used to represent a character can vary case by case, the C++ Standard Library abstracts the string concept in the class template std::basic_string, which takes the character data type as a parameter. The std::basic_string template takes three type parameters:
The character type
Some of the intrinsic properties and behaviors of the character type encapsulated in a traits class
An allocator type that is used to allocate the internal data structures for
std::basic_string
The traits and allocator parameters are defaulted, as shown in the following snippet:
template <typename charT,
typename Traits = std::char_traits<chart>,
typename Allocator = std::allocator<chart>>
std::basic_string;The C++03 Standard Library also provides...