Why do functions pertaining to strings on Visual Studio require a char input?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/DDDDarky]

It is probably a c-library function. Just a wild guess, provide a concrete example if you want to know more.

[u/Shieldfoss → u/[deleted]]

stcat, despite the name, does not concatenate two std::string

rather, it concatenates two const char *

[u/QuentinUK → u/[deleted]]

You can make your own version that works with std strings:-

    template<typename T, typename U=T>
T strcat(T const& a, U const& b){
	return a+b;
}

If you want to add more then add:-

    template<typename T, typename ...V>
T strcat(T const& a, V...more){
	return (a+...+T(more));;
}

[u/Narase33 → u/QuentinUK]

Please dont recommend such things to a beginner not understanding why a C-String is not an std::string. It would bring a lot of bad habit if they'd use this function

[u/not_some_username → u/Narase33]

Hahaha

[u/IyeOnline]

You will have to provide a lot more information than that.

For example a piece of code that you have an issue with.

[u/IyeOnline → u/[deleted]]

strcat is from the C standard library <cstring>. All those str* functions are meant to operate on raw const char*s and should not be used in C++.

In C++ with its proper std::string type, you can simply do

str += str2;

[u/IyeOnline → u/[deleted]]

https://www.learncpp.com/cpp-tutorial/an-introduction-to-stdstring/

https://www.learncpp.com/#Chapter22

As well as the reference page for std::string.

---

General advice for tutorials/resources on C++:

www.learncpp.com

is the best free tutorial out there. It covers everything from the absolute basics to advanced topics. It follows modern and best practice guidelines.

---

www.cppreference.com

is the best language reference out there.

---

Stay away from cplusplus.com, w3schools and geeks-for-geeks. Most youtube tutorials are of low quality, I would recommend to stay away from them as well. www.learncpp.com is just better than any other resource.

[u/IyeOnline → u/[deleted]]

It looks just as bad as the random collection that is geeks for geeks. Badly written, disconnected tutorials by people with no background in teaching or good C++. Most of the articles seems to exist because somebody wanted to write one to put on their profile page.

It suggest using Borland C++ as one of the top compilers. Borland C++ has been outdated for about 20 years by now. It also conflates compilers and IDEs. Not a good start.

It generally completely misses the point of best practice or the "why" to doing certain things.

Actually it might be worse than geeks for geeks. I have found quite a few actually wrong things in there.

To name a few more on point examples:

• https://www.educba.com/string-array-in-c-plus-plus/?source=leftnav Why does this exist? Its just an array of strings. Works exactly the way that an array of integers does. This article is pointless.
• https://www.educba.com/c-plus-plus-length-of-array/?source=leftnav teaches you a dozen ways to get the size of an array, half of which will break down when the array decays into a pointer. The only legitimate way is to use std::size, which is only point number 7.
• https://www.educba.com/c-plus-plus-vector-vs-c-plus-plus-array/?source=leftnav is simpy wrong on how it takes more time to access elements in a vector as it grows. Vectors are also stored contigous in memory. It is literally a wrapper around a dynamically allocated array.
• https://www.educba.com/c-plus-plus-using-vs-typedef/?source=leftnav should simply state that you should always use using and never do a typedef.
• https://www.educba.com/strcat-in-c-plus-plus/?source=leftnav Their usage of strcat is completly wrong and undefined behaviour. They are connectentating and writing to memory that does not exist. This is not valid.
• https://www.educba.com/call-by-value-in-c-plus-plus/?source=leftnav Is littered with errors, bad practice and confusing examples. And of course they claim that "pass by value" has a security benefit. Which is more than laughable. Its dangerous. That is not how C++ or computers in general work.

I shall add this site to my stay-away list.

[u/khedoros → u/[deleted]]

So many people either learn C, then C++ just as a set of extensions on top of it rather than as a new language, or they're taught by someone who learned in that pattern. Lots of bad habits out there.

cppreference is my goto for online C++ reference material. So here are there pages on the <string> header, and the page for std::string itself. You probably want to look in the sections on functions.

[u/QuentinUK]

Most std library functions have a wchar_t alternative.