bearophile wrote:
Walter Bright:
3. The glaring fact that std::vector<char> and std::string are
different suggests something is still wrong.
In an array/vector you want O(1) access time to all items (ignoring
RAM-cache access/transfer delays), while in a string with
variable-width Unicode encoding that can be hard to do. So they look
like two different data structures.
The real reason is different (multibyte support in std::string is at
best nonexistent). std::vector was defined by Stepanov alone. But by the
time std::string was standardized, many factions of the committee had a
feature on their list. std::string is the result of that patchwork.
Andrei
