For how long before standardisation was `string` available?

Question

C++ was formally standardised in 1998, but how far back can we find a class named string that looks like std::string does in C++2003 in a pre-standard C++ implementation?

I ask because CString, as part of MFC, has been "out there" since 1992 and I'm trying to determine whether it was first seen before or after what eventually became std::string.

Answer 1

Well before. In 1992 everybody was still rolling their own string classes. Remember that std::string was originally terrible, and then it became terrible and an STL-style container- but that was very late in the process, as the Committee delayed the first Standard for two years to fit in the STL and everything Stepanov needed. So std::string wasn't finalized until fairly late.

Answer 2

You might find one somewhat similar before 1998, but in practice, it was several years after the standard before you could more or less count on one being there. And the earlier ones were at best "sort of" similar; I remember noting the absense of push_back in one of the committee drafts (the last one, I think), which was an obvious oversight, that wouldn't have occured if anyone had implemented a version with the function.