converting old c strings to STL

[Sprechen sie von C++]

I have some old code and I was wondering if there is any quick strategy to
convert everything to std::string so that I can make the code compile with
fewer warnings?

Manual work is tedious in the extreme.

 

[Ian Collins]

I have some old code and I was wondering if there is any quick strategy
to convert everything to std::string so that I can make the code compile
with fewer warnings?

What you are asking is verging on the impossible. You have to analyse
every function that manipulates the C style "strings" and convert them.

Manual work is tedious in the extreme.

That depends on how much it pays!

 

[Jorgen Grahn]

If your goal is to have fewer warnings then you should fix the causes of
warnings (probably using const char* instead of char* in most places).

Yes, using C strings doesn't mean you should have compiler warnings;
something else is wrong.

If you want to convert to std::string you can replace all "char *" with
"const std::string&", then fix compiling errors, then fix unit test errors.

Perhaps a bit too naive approach, and I'm pretty sure he has no unit
tests. (You could argue that he should create them, or not rewrite the
code using std::string.)

I'd try it on a piece of the code first -- in some of the classes for
example. And I would first analyze the code for:

- use of C-style casts (gcc can warn for them)
- use of memcpy(), bzero(), memset() and the other functions which
you cannot safely use on objects

/Jorgen

 

[Jorgen Grahn]

Jorgen Grahn ha scritto:


VC by default emits warnings for many C string functions.

Oh. Then I guess it's time to read through them, understand them, and
disable them (in that order).

/Jorgen

 

[Sprechen sie von C++]

I am slowly cleaning up the code, the whole thing is 250K lines of code.
Keeps me busy working anyway.