Can std::string overload "substr" for rvalue *this and steal resources?

It just occurred to me I noticed that std::string's substr operation could be much more efficient for rvalues when it could steal the allocated memory from *this.

The Standard library of N3225 contains the following member function declaration of std::string

basic_string substr(size_type pos = 0, size_type n = npos) const;

Can an implementation that could implement an optimized substr for rvalues overload that and provide two versions, one of which could reuse the buffer for rvalue strings?

basic_string substr(size_type pos = 0) &&;
basi开发者_开发问答c_string substr(size_type pos, size_type n) const;

I imagine the rvalue version could be implemented as follows, reusing the memory of *this an setting *this to a moved-from state.

basic_string substr(size_type pos = 0) && {
  basic_string __r;
  __r.__internal_share_buf(pos, __start + pos, __size - pos);
  __start = 0; // or whatever the 'empty' state is
  return __r;
}

Does this work in an efficient fashion on common string implementations or would this take too much housekeeping?

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Firstly, an implementation cannot add an overload that steals the source, since that would be detectable:

std::string s="some random string";
std::string s2=std::move(s).substr(5,5);
assert(s=="some random string"); 
assert(s2=="rando");

The first assert would fail if the implementation stole the data from s, and the C++0x wording essentially outlaws copy on write.

Secondly, this wouldn't necessarily be an optimization anyway: you'd have to add additional housekeeping in std::string to handle the case that it's a substring of a larger string, and it would mean keeping large blocks around when there was no longer any strings referencing the large string, just some substring of it.

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Yes, and maybe it should be proposed to the standards committee, or maybe implemented in a library. I don't really know how valuable the optimization would be. And that would be an interesting study all on its own.

When gcc grows support for r-value this, someone ought to try it and report how useful it is.

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There are a few string classes out there implementing copy-on-write. But I wouldn't recommend adding yet another string type to your project unless really justified.

Check out the discussion in Memory-efficient C++ strings (interning, ropes, copy-on-write, etc)