Length of a C++ std::string in bytes

Question

I'm having some trouble figuring out the exact semantics of std::string.length(). The documentation explicitly points out that length() returns the number of characters in the string and not the number of bytes. I was wondering in which cases this actually makes a difference.

In particular, is this only relevant to non-char instantiations of std::basic_string<> or can I also get into trouble when storing UTF-8 strings with multi-byte characters? Does the standard allow for length() to be UTF8-aware?

Answer 1

When dealing with non-char instantiations of std::basic_string<>, sure, length may not equal number of bytes. This is particularly evident with std::wstring:

std::wstring ws = L"hi";
cout << ws.length();     // <-- 2, not 4

But std::string is about char characters; there is no such thing as a multi-byte character as far as std::string is concerned, whether you crammed one in at a high level or not. So, std::string.length() is always the number of bytes represented by the string. Note that if you're cramming multibyte "characters" into an std::string, then your definition of "character" suddenly becomes at odds with that of the container and of the standard.

Answer 2

If we are talking specifically about std::string, then length() does return the number of bytes.

This is because a std::string is a basic_string of chars, and the C++ Standard defines the size of one char to be exactly one byte.

Note that the Standard doesn't say how many bits are in a byte, but that's another story entirely and you probably don't care.

EDIT: The Standard does say that an implementation shall provide a definition for CHAR_BIT which says how many bits are in a byte.

By the way, if you go down a road where you do care how many bits are in a byte, you might consider reading this.

Answer 3

A std::string is std::basic_string<char>, so s.length() * sizeof(char) = byte length. Also, std::string knows nothing of UTF-8, so you're going to get the byte size even if that's not really what you're after.

If you have UTF-8 data in a std::string, you'll need to use something else such as ICU to get the "real" length.