Std::string::size

Syntax

size_t size() const;

Description

Return length of string

Returns the length of the string, in terms of bytes.

This is the number of actual bytes that conform the contents of the string, which is not necessarily equal to its storage capacity.

Note that string objects handle bytes without knowledge of the encoding that may eventually be used to encode the characters it contains. Therefore, the value returned may not correspond to the actual number of encoded characters in sequences of multi-byte or variable-length characters (such as UTF-8).

Both string::size and string::length are synonyms and return the same value.

Parameters

none

Return Value

The number of bytes in the string.

size_t is an unsigned integral type (the same as member type string::size_type).

Example

The below code will return 11 because the string Hello world has 11 characters.

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
  string str("Hello world");
  cout << str.size() << endl;
  return 0;
}