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up vote 4 down vote favorite

The last week I saw at least three questions where people were confused about the differences between char * and std::string or made some related mistakes.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with this, I just don't get the exact reason for this. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

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It wasn't confusion on my part but dealing with strings (and all their variety) in C++ made me want to go work in a different language. – Ken Henderson Nov 27 '10 at 21:49
@confusedGeek: That's actually not a bad idea... – Mason Wheeler Nov 27 '10 at 22:46
This question should only be tagged as C++ as there is no such confusion in C since C does not have an std::string. – Brian R. Bondy Nov 28 '10 at 0:46

2 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

Given that things like

std::string myString = "Hello, world!";

are perfectly valid, it seems rather obvious to me why there is confusion.

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up vote 10 down vote

Because they're both commonly known as "strings" in a language that has no real string type. It's very understandable that inexperienced coders would be confused by that...

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+1 for no real string – Kugel Nov 28 '10 at 5:35

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