A Super String Class

Yet another string class?

This class got its start a number of years ago. At that time, it was common to have to write
even the simplest data structure class. Since then it has gradually grown and mutated at
irregular intervals. The result is fairly ambitious, for a string class.

Super String features string and buffer operations, conversions and comparisons, extensible
searching, and C compatibility.

The complete documentation is here.

Here is the header, implementation,
and example code. These are marked-up html files and so are fairly
large.

Examples

Here is some code to demo the various parts of the class:


{
// assign a string some values

SS ss (“hello”);

// the new value is “65” not “A”

ss = 65;

// the new value is “65c”

ss += ‘c’;
}
{
// allocate a buffer

SS ss (SS::Buffer(6));

// indexing, length() and size() are the same

for (int i=0; i<ss.length(); i++) ss[i] = ‘a’ + i;

// substring, the current value is “abcdef”

ss (2,3) == “cde”;

// the new value is “ab12f”

ss (2,3) = “12”;

// the new value is “abxyf”

ss.set (“xy”, 2);

// the new value is “abf”, “xy” is returned

ss.cut (2, 2) == “xy”;

// now back to “abcdef”

ss.paste (“cde”, 2);

// fill with x’s, “xxxxxx”

ss.fill (‘x’);
}
{
// comparisons

SS ss(12);

// 12 is less than 13

ss < 13;

ss = “one”;

// “three” is greater than “one”

“three” >= ss;
}
{
// searching

SS ss (“The next one”);

// find the word “next”

int p = ss.findNext (“next”);

// can’t find the word “first”

p = ss.findNext (“first”); // p == SS::notfound

// find the first whitespace character

p = ss.findNext (SS::whitespace);

// find the next whitespace character

p = ss.findNext (SS::whitespace, p + 1);

// find the word “one”

SS result;
ss.findNext (SS::FindOneOrMore (SS::blackspace), p, result);
result == “one”;

// ss contains “The”

bool b = ss.contains (“The”); // b == true

// there are 9 lowercase characters

int n = ss.population (SS::lowercase); // n == 9

// remove whitespace, ss is now “Thenextone”

ss.remove (SS::whitespace);

// replace the ‘T’, ss is now “thenextone”

ss.replace (SS::uppercase, “t”);

std::cout << “the string is “” << ss << “”” << std::endl;
}
{
// numeric

SS ss (“100”);

// extract the number 100

long v = ss.toLong();

// create a base 16 string

SS::toBase (v, 16) == “64”;
}
{
// matching

SS ss (“theOne1 theTwo2 theThree3”);

// an empty vector for results
// each element will be a position and a length

SS::BegLenVect result;

// get positions of all the “the”s

ss.match (“the”, result);

// reverse the “the”s

ss.reverse (result) == “ehtOne1 ehtTwo2 ehtThree3”;

// remove the now reversed “the”s

ss.removeRange (result) == “One1 Two2 Three3”;

// break up into tokens, reusing result

ss.tokenize (result);

// change string to “One1 Two2 Four4”

ss (result[2]) = “Four4”;

// get a vector with the digits

ss.match (SS::digit, result);

// cut the ‘4’

ss.cut (result[2]);

// remove the ‘2’ by limiting the remove range

ss.remove (SS::digit, result[1]);

// remove the 1 via an ‘X’

ss.fill (‘X’, result[0]).remove (‘X’) == “One Two Four”;

std::cout << “the string is “” << ss << “”” << std::endl;
}

CString compatibility

Support for additional types can be added externally to the class. A header file,
“QString.h”, is provided to supply compatibility for CString. To allow a CString to
convert to a Super String:


typedef SS QString;

inline void SSconvert (CString const & u, QString & w)
{
w.assign ((char const *)u, u.GetLength());
}

A Super String can convert to a CString via operator char*. To allow relational
comparisons, e.g. ==, >, etc. define:

inline int SScompare (QString const & u, CString const & w)
{
return u.compare((char const *)w,w.GetLength());
}

Portability

The source and test code have been compiled with VC6.0, sp2. The only things Microsoft-specific
should be the numeric type __int64, often referred to as long long, and _vsnprintf, a variant of
sprintf.

To do

Possible performance enhancements, UNICODE support.

Download source + doc + demo proj + test code – 62 KB

Download source only – 24 KB

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