Miro Jurisic wrote:
So what's the advantage of using std::basic_string over, say, std::vector ?
reference counting optimization and maybe others, where there is.
Reference counting optimization is widely understood to be make performance of multi-threaded code worse than some other implementations of basic_string. Can name some other reason why basic_string would be a good rep for Unicode strings? I can't think of any.
Small string optimisation. ;) But, whether you use std::string, std::vector, or manually manage memory, it should be an implementation detail. The binary representation should probably be exposed by its iterators, not the std::string. i.e. instead of get_binary_layout(), have: binary_iterator binary_begin(); binary_iterator binary_end(); const_binary_iterator binary_begin() const; const_binary_iterator binary_end() const; Should you have non-const binary iterators? IMO, yes, anyone who uses them should know what they're letting themselves in for. Although, you might want to guarantee that the binary representation is in continuous memory, and isn't, say, a deque.