[direwolf20]

It's a class, so it doesn't work in C.

[uecker]

Sure, but you can have a similar string abstraction in C. What would you miss? The overloaded operators?

[direwolf20]

Automatic memory accounting — construct/copy/destruct. You can't abstract these in C. You always have to call i_copied_the_string(&string) after copying the string and you always have to call the_string_is_out_of_scope_now(&string) just before it goes out of scope

[uecker]

This seems orthogonal to std::string. People who pick C do not want automatic memory management, but might want better strings.

[direwolf20]

Automatic memory management is literally what makes them better

[uecker]

For many string operations such as appending, inserting, overwriting etc. the memory management can be made automatic as well in C, and I think this is the main advantage. Just automatic free at scope end does not work (without extensions).

[direwolf20]

You can make strings (or bignums or matrices) more convenient than the C default but you can never make them as convenient as ints, while in C++ you can.