Using C++ how many characters are in a string array?

Question

I have the below piece of code and I'm very confused by it. I'm trying to figure out how much memory (bytes of memory/space is actually being taken up by my partially filled array). I've got the below piece of code but I'm a bit confused.

If I declare a string array of 8 elements, and partially fill the elements with the two strings. The for loop will start at 0 and go until size of my array 32 possible bytes (assuming I need 4 bytes per string) divided by size of the first element in the array. That is returns 4 - the size of the element of the first string in the array. But that still doesn't tell me how many letters/characters are in that string.

I understand inside the loop we increment count when the value in the array doesn't equal a blank/null value. Giving us the total filled (non empty) positions in our array. However I still don't have a value for our actual amount of characters.

How does this tell us how many characters are in my strings?

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int main() 
{
string test_array[8] = {"henry", "henry2"};
size_t count = 0;

for (size_t i = 0; i < sizeof(test_array)/sizeof(*test_array); i++) 
{

    cout << "NOT THE POINTER: "<<sizeof(test_array) << endl;
    cout << "POINTER: "<<sizeof(*test_array) << endl;

    if(test_array[i] != "")
        count ++;
}

int num_elem = sizeof(test_array)/sizeof(test_array[0]);
cout << num_elem << endl;
cout << count << endl;

return 0;
}

NathanOliver · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-17 14:50:22Z

2

To know how many characters are in a std::string use the size() method.

answered Feb 17, 2015 at 14:50

NathanOliver

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3 Comments

ryanpattison Over a year ago

or the length() method.

YelizavetaYR Over a year ago

But length() works on a particular item. I know I can say test_array[o].length(); but what if I don't know how many items are in my array (since its partially filled) and i want to be able to find out how many characters i have in total (in this example in the first two fields).

ryanpattison Over a year ago

@YelizavetaYR This answer is proposing you change count++; to count += test_array[i].size();. count += test_array[i].length(); is just another option.

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