Either way is fine but DO NOT use public inheritance from an STL container (e.g. std::string). They don't have virtual descructors, that's one reason. You can use "using" declarations for the methods that are same as in std::string superclass:

struct A { //"std::string"
void foo() {...}
};

struct B : private A { //"mystring"
using A::foo;
};

Now you can do

B b;
b.foo();

Quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Either way is fine but DO NOT use public inheritance from an STL container (e.g. std::string). They don't have virtual descructors, that's one reason.

Never say never [wink], it's okay (as in not exactly a great idea never-the-less) as long as you aware of the predicaments of doing such things. That is no dynamic binding of methods (since there are no viritual member functions in std::basic_string), undefined behaviour when invoking delete on pointers to the base type (basic_string in this case since it does not have a virtual destructor).

@paic - making a wrapper around std::basic_string (std::string is a type alias for std::basic_string) with all wrapper functions inlined wont effect efficiency in anyway but as with any form of "wrapping" it's annoying to write them.

Personally i think it would better do as the boost string algorithms library does, just extend it by writing generic algorithms that can work on any string type. In fact take a look at boost string algorithms library [grin].

[Edited by - snk_kid on November 21, 2005 5:38:56 AM]

Hi,

You can either have a member variable of std::string or privately inherit from std::string.

However, given what I've seen of what you want to do so far, I'd say you'd be better off using free functions to accomplish what you want:

e.g. instead of:
void String::toIntArray(char seperator, int* array);

consider doing:

std::vector<int> toIntVector(const std::string& String, char seperator);

PS. I 'm working on an email with more comments about your stirng class.