char[] to hex string exercise

Question

Below is my current char* to hex string function. I wrote it as an exercise in bit manipulation. It takes ~7ms on a AMD Athlon MP 2800+ to hexify a 10 million byte array. Is

Answer 1

This is my version, which, unlike the OP's version, doesn't assume that std::basic_string has its data in contiguous region:

#include 

using std::string;

static char const* digits("0123456789ABCDEF");

string
tohex(string const& data)
{
    string result(data.size() * 2, 0);
    string::iterator ptr(result.begin());
    for (string::const_iterator cur(data.begin()), end(data.end()); cur != end; ++cur) {
        unsigned char c(*cur);
        *ptr++ = digits[c >> 4];
        *ptr++ = digits[c & 15];
    }
    return result;
}