Convert a single character to a string?

Question

Simple question (in C++):

How do I convert a character into a string. So for example I have a string str = "abc";

And I want to extract the first letter, but I want it to be a string as opposed to a character.

I tried

string firstLetter = str[0] + ""; 

and

string firstLetter = & str[0];  

Neither works. Ideas?

Answer 1

Off the top of my head, if you're using STL then do this:

string firstLetter(1,str[0]); 

Answer 2

You can use the std::string(size_t , char ) constructor:

string firstletter( 1, str[0]); 

or you could use string::substr():

string firstletter2( str.substr(0, 1));