Extracting substrings

C++:
Extracting substrings

How to:

C++ makes it easy to grab a substring. std::string is our trusty sidekick here, with the substr() function doing most of the heavy lifting. Let’s cut to the chase with some code:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

int main() {
    std::string fullString = "Hello, World! Programming in C++ is fun.";
    std::string snippet;

    // Extract "World" starting at index 7 with length 5
    snippet = fullString.substr(7, 5);
    std::cout << snippet << std::endl; // Output: World

    // Extract "Programming" starting at index 14
    snippet = fullString.substr(14);
    std::cout << snippet << std::endl; // Output: Programming in C++ is fun.

    return 0;
}

Deep Dive

Substrings aren’t new. Old-school C programmers used strncpy and manual bookkeeping. String handling’s a common breed of bugs, so C++ aimed to simplify it. std::string and its substr method date back to C++98 and have been relieving stress since.

Alternatives? Sure. You could go manual with std::string::iterator or dust off C functions—if you like living dangerously. A more modern take might involve string_views for non-modifying peeking.

Implementation? Under the hood, substr often allocates new storage and copies data, which isn’t free. It’s light compared to wrestling with raw pointers and char arrays of ye olde times, but it’s not instant.

C++:Extracting substrings

How to:

Deep Dive

See Also

C++:
Extracting substrings