std::string copy constructor NOT deep in GCC 4.1.2?

Question

I wonder if i misunderstood something: does a copy constructor from std::string not copy its content?

string str1 = \"Hello World\"         


        

Answer 1

It is entirely possible that your string implementation uses copy-on-write which would explain the behavior. Although this is less likely with newer implementations (and non-conforming on C++11 implementations).

The standard places no restriction on the value of the pointer returned by c_str (besides that it points to a null-terminated c-string), so your code is inherently non-portable.