How are strings implemented in C++ and what do they consist of?

In C++, strings are mainly represented in two ways: as arrays of characters (C-style strings) and as objects of the std::string class from the standard library.

1. C-style strings — these are arrays of char characters ending with a null character \0. They are simple but require manual memory management and caution with overflow.

2. std::string — this is a wrapper class that stores a dynamic array of characters and manages memory automatically. Inside std::string, there is usually a pointer to a buffer with characters, the size of the string, and the capacity of the buffer. It provides convenient methods for working with strings (concatenation, search, modification, etc.).

Example of using std::string:

#include <string>
#include <iostream>

int main() {
    std::string s = "Hello";
    s += " world!";
    std::cout << s << std::endl; // Outputs: Hello world!
    return 0;
}