Why string_view instead of generalized container_view?

Question

I\'ve found string_view from new C++17 standard a bit redundant.

We\'ve got a quite verbose collection of simple mechanisms for passing data to callee, without much

Answer 1

string_view offers more than a simple pointer on string. You need to look at it as more than a simple non-owning pointer: if that's all it were, string_view couldn't allow you to "slice" parts of the string, and apply operations to it (while still being a view; thus not incurring the cost of copy):

char *s = "welcome to stackoverflow";
auto s = std::string_view{s + 8, 2}; // a view on "to"
// you can then apply many operations on this view, that wouldn't make sense more on your general non_owning:
s.remove_prefix(std::min(s.find_first_not_of(" "), s.size()));
// it also "inherits" (copies the API) a lot directly from std::basic_string
auto view2 = s.substr(3, 4); // a generic non-owning ptr would copy here, instead of giving you a new view