limit on <string>?

[arlenagha]

i just found out that there is a limit on how many characters a string object can hold. its about 4000 characters. at first i knew that there had to be a limit but why is it 4000 characters? how would i get around that limitation??

[DragonHead]

Actually, the size is machine dependent. On 32bit machines, the size is 4294967296.

That is 2^32.

[Stuka]

I'd be willing to bet that the limit is more implementation than machine dependent. Per the class definition, you can call max_size() to find out the limit.

[Strogian]

Originally posted by DragonHead
Actually, the size is machine dependent. On 32bit machines, the size is 4294967296.

That is 2^32.

Well if that's true then there's really no limit, since that's the maximum memory you could have anyway. :)

[bwkaz]

Heh. Not quite -- Intel processors later than the Pentium (AKA i686 and newer) can actually address up to 64GB of memory using some extension to the paging mechanism.

That's what CONFIG_HIGHMEM_64GB enables. :)

[Strogian]

Question is -- would enabling those extensions also raise the string limit? :)

[DragonHead]

I dug around, it is implementation dependent, not machine dependent. That of course, makes sence when you stop and think about it...

[bwkaz]

Strogian -- heh. No, it wouldn't, because Stuka was right when he said the real limit is implementation-dependent (rather than machine-dependent). :)

Use the max_size() function to see what it is.