std::string getting (char *) instead of (const char *)

Question

std::string.c_str() returns a (const char *) value. I Googled and found that I can do the following:

std::string myString = "Hello World";
char *buf = &myString[0];

How is this possible? &myString[0] is an object of type std::string, so how can this work?

Answer 1

&myString[0] is a object of type std::string

No it isn't. myString[0] is a reference to the first character of the string; &myString[0] is a pointer to that character. The operator precedence is such that it means &(myString[0]) and not (&mystring)[0].

Beware that, accessed this way, there's no guarantee that the string will be zero-terminated; so if you use this in a C-style function that expects a zero-terminated string, then you'll be relying on undefined behaviour.