Why don't the std::fstream classes take a std::string?

Question

This isn't a design question, really, though it may seem like it. (Well, okay, it's kind of a design question). What I'm wondering is why the C++ std::fstream classes don't take a std::string in their constructor or open methods. Everyone loves code examples so:

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>

int main()
{
    std::string filename = "testfile";      
    std::ifstream fin;

    fin.open(filename.c_str()); // Works just fine.
    fin.close();

    //fin.open(filename); // Error: no such method.
    //fin.close();
}

This gets me all the time when working with files. Surely the C++ library would use std::string wherever possible?

Answer 1

By taking a C string the C++03 std::fstream class reduced dependency on the std::string class. In C++11, however, the std::fstream class does allow passing a std::string for its constructor parameter.

Now, you may wonder why isn't there a transparent conversion from a std:string to a C string, so a class that expects a C string could still take a std::string just like a class that expects a std::string can take a C string.

The reason is that this would cause a conversion cycle, which in turn may lead to problems. For example, suppose std::string would be convertible to a C string so that you could use std::strings with fstreams. Suppose also that C string are convertible to std::strings as is the state in the current standard. Now, consider the following:

void f(std::string str1, std::string str2);
void f(char* cstr1, char* cstr2);

void g()
{
    char* cstr = "abc";
    std::string str = "def";
    f(cstr, str);  // ERROR:  ambiguous
}

Because you can convert either way between a std::string and a C string the call to f() could resolve to either of the two f() alternatives, and is thus ambiguous. The solution is to break the conversion cycle by making one conversion direction explicit, which is what the STL chose to do with c_str().

Answer 2

There are several places where the C++ standard committee did not really optimize the interaction between facilities in the standard library.

std::string and its use in the library is one of these.

One other example is std::swap. Many containers have a swap member function, but no overload of std::swap is supplied. The same goes for std::sort.

I hope all these small things will be fixed in the upcoming standard.