(Why) does an empty string have an address?

Question

I guessed no, but this output of something like this shows it does

string s=\"\";
cout<<&s;

what is the point of having empty string

Answer 1

s is a string object so it has an address. It has some internal data structures keeping track of the string. For example, current length of the string, current storage reserved for string, etc.

More generally, the C++ standard requires all objects to have a nonzero size. This helps ensure that every object has a unique address.

9 Classes

Complete objects and member subobjects of class type shall have nonzero size.