Lecture 2. Strings. Master's Course in C++ (MIPT, 2025-2026).

Master's degree lectures at MIPT on modern C++. Department of Microprocessor Technologies.

In this lecture, we will invent our first tool for generic programming — generic classes. We will start with a rather simple and naive representation of strings and, by gradually recognizing and solving the problems we face, we will follow an evolutionary path to their modern state. We will also examine the details of `string_view`, `format_string`, and explore major string optimizations like COW and SSO. Additionally, we will learn something rather sad about benchmarking.

Lecturer: Konstantin Vladimirov.
Lecture date: September 3, 2025.
Filming assistance: Anastasia Chernikova, Vladislav Belov

Previous lecture:    • Lecture 1. The Very Soul of C++. Master's ...  
Next lecture: TBD

Slides for all lectures: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cpp-...
Code examples for all lectures: https://github.com/tilir/cpp-masters

Timeline:
00:00 Hello, different worlds
06:27 Null-terminated strings, or "Serever, Reply Hat"
13:54 String class: A Net Positive
20:34 String views and dead parrots
31:00 Benchmarking pitfalls of string concatenation
38:55 Optimizing string performance: COW and SSO
51:20 Generalizing string class
58:46 Homework and Reinventing A Wheel

Errata:
Empty for now