📅 Date: Jan 26, 2026
🔥 Topic: Standard Template Library (STL) String Functions

🛠️ Why use the String Class?

In C, we had to manage character arrays manually (very painful). In C++, we have the <string> class which comes with superpowers (Built-in functions).

🧰 The Toolkit

Here are the most useful functions I learned today:

Function Description
str.length() Returns the count of characters.
str.push_back('x') Adds a character to the end.
str.pop_back() Removes the last character.
str.append("..") Joins another string at the end.
str.find("abc") Searches for "abc" and returns index.

💻 Day 26 Code: String Playground

#include <iostream>
#include <string> // Important Header
using namespace std;

int main() {
    string str = "Sahil";

    // 1. Length
    cout << "Length: " << str.length() << endl;

    // 2. Modify
    str.push_back('!'); 
    cout << "After Push: " << str << endl;

    // 3. Append
    str.append(" Codes");
    cout << "After Append: " << str << endl;

    // 4. Substring (Extracting part of string)
    // substr(startIndex, length)
    string sub = str.substr(0, 5); 
    cout << "Extracted Name: " << sub << endl;

    return 0;
}

💭 Thoughts

These functions save so much time. Imagine writing a loop just to find the length of a word every time. std::string handles memory management automatically, so no segmentation faults!