Boost C++ Libraries

The class boost::string_view and other classes derived from basic_string_view represent references to strings or substrings. When you are parsing/processing strings from some external source, frequently you want to pass a piece of text to a procedure for specialized processing. Before std::string_view, the canonical way to do this used to be a std::string, but that has certain drawbacks:

1) If you are processing a buffer of text (say a HTTP response or the contents of a file), then you have to create the string from the text you want to pass, which involves memory allocation and copying of data.

2) If a routine receives a constant std::string and wants to pass a portion of that string to another routine, then it must create a new string of that substring.

3) If a routine receives a constant std::string and wants to return a portion of the string, then it must create a new string to return.

boost::string_view is designed to solve these efficiency problems. A boost::string_view is a read-only reference to a contiguous sequence of characters, and provides much of the functionality of std::string. A boost::string_view is cheap to create, copy and pass by value, because it does not actually own the storage that it points to.

A boost::string_view is implemented as a small struct that contains a pointer to the start of the character data and a count. A boost::string_view is cheap to create and cheap to copy.

boost::string_view acts as a container; it includes all the methods that you would expect in a container, including iteration support, operator[], at and size. It can be used with any of the iterator-based algorithms in the STL - as long as you do not need to change the underlying data. For example, std::sort and std::remove will not work.

Besides generic container functionality, boost::string_view provides a subset of the interface of std::string. This makes it easy to replace parameters of type const std::string & with boost::string_view. Like std::string, boost::string_view has a static member variable named npos to denote the result of failed searches, and to mean "the end".

	Caution
	Because a boost::string_view does not own the data that it refers to, it introduces lifetime issues into code that uses it. The programmer must ensure that the data that a string_view refers to exists as long as the string_view does.

Note

Boost.Utility also includes the class string_ref: - string_ref is the initial implementation of Jeffrey Yaskin's N3442: string_ref: a non-owning reference to a string. - string_view is an updated implementation to reflect the Library Fundamentals TS N4480: [string.view]. Please prefer string_view / basic_string_view over string_ref / basic_string_ref: - The basic_string_view class better matches std::basic_string_view. - basic_string_view has WAY more constexpr support. - Code that uses basic_string_ref should continue to work. - Not much code depends on basic_string_ref anymore.

Integrating string_view into your code is fairly simple. Wherever you pass a const std::string & or std::string as a parameter, that's a candidate for passing a boost::string_view.

std::string extract_part ( const std::string &bar ) {
    return bar.substr ( 2, 3 );
}

if ( extract_part ( "ABCDEFG" ).front() == 'C' ) { /* do something */ }

Let's figure out what happens in this contrived example.

Two std::string s are created, and two copy operations. That is potentially four memory allocations and deallocations, and the associated copying of data.

Now let's look at the same code with string_view:

boost::string_view extract_part ( boost::string_view bar ) {
    return bar.substr ( 2, 3 );
}

if ( extract_part ( "ABCDEFG" ).front() == "C" ) { /* do something */ }

No memory allocations. No copying of character data. No changes to the code other than the types. There are two string_view s created, and two string_view s copied, but those are cheap operations.

The header file <boost/utility/string_view.hpp> defines a template boost::basic_string_view, and four specializations string_view, wstring_view, u16string_view, u32string_view - for char / wchar_t / char16_t / char32_t.

#include <boost/utility/string_view.hpp>

Construction and copying:

constexpr basic_string_view ();    // Constructs an empty string_view
constexpr basic_string_view(const charT* str); // Constructs from a NULL-terminated string
constexpr basic_string_view(const charT* str, size_type len); // Constructs from a pointer, length pair
template<typename Allocator>
basic_string_view(const std::basic_string<charT, traits, Allocator>& str); // Constructs from a std::string
basic_string_view (const basic_string_view &rhs);
basic_string_view& operator=(const basic_string_view &rhs);

string_view does not define a move constructor nor a move-assignment operator because copying a string_view is just a cheap as moving one.

Basic container-like functions:

constexpr size_type size()     const ;
constexpr size_type length()   const ;
constexpr size_type max_size() const ;
constexpr bool empty()         const ;

// All iterators are const_iterators
constexpr const_iterator  begin() const ;
constexpr const_iterator cbegin() const ;
constexpr const_iterator    end() const ;
constexpr const_iterator   cend() const ;
const_reverse_iterator         rbegin() const ;
const_reverse_iterator        crbegin() const ;
const_reverse_iterator           rend() const ;
const_reverse_iterator          crend() const ;

Access to the individual elements (all of which are const):

constexpr const charT& operator[](size_type pos) const ;
const charT& at(size_t pos) const ;
constexpr const charT& front() const ;
constexpr const charT& back()  const ;
constexpr const charT* data()  const ;

Modifying the string_view (but not the underlying data):

void clear();
void remove_prefix(size_type n);
void remove_suffix(size_type n);

Searching:

size_type find(basic_string_view s) const ;
size_type find(charT c) const ;
size_type rfind(basic_string_view s) const ;
size_type rfind(charT c) const ;
size_type find_first_of(charT c) const ;
size_type find_last_of (charT c) const ;

size_type find_first_of(basic_string_view s) const ;
size_type find_last_of(basic_string_view s) const ;
size_type find_first_not_of(basic_string_view s) const ;
size_type find_first_not_of(charT c) const ;
size_type find_last_not_of(basic_string_view s) const ;
size_type find_last_not_of(charT c) const ;

String-like operations:

constexpr basic_string_view substr(size_type pos, size_type n=npos) const ; // Creates a new string_view
bool starts_with(charT c) const ;
bool starts_with(basic_string_view x) const ;
bool ends_with(charT c) const ;
bool ends_with(basic_string_view x) const ;

boost 1.71

boost 1.53

Author: Clow, Marshall

Copyright 2012 Marshall Clow