Quote Originally Posted by Martin O View Post
Another disadvantage is that std::string is standard whereas your custom string class is not. A new team member wouldn't have to spend any time learning the 'Alex String Library'. He/she could instead be using a well documented, well tested, well known library. If he/she doesn't already know std::string, he/she could learn it & know that the knowledge will still be relevant if he/she changed companies (unlike effort spent to learn alex::string). When there's a bug they can be 99% sure its not a bug in the string class (although there seems to be no shortage of programmers that blame the compiler). They could post questions on programming forums about how to use std::string but not alex::string.
That isn't so much a problem. Actually I added all standard member functions to my own string class just to meet that requirement. You should also see that the source code of existing STL implementations is without any comments and ugly to hell. So, debugging my own string class is much less frustrating than debugging into the basic_string. Did you ever debug into the 'traits' and didn't get lost somewhere? Same applies to documentation of basic_string which I wouldn't name 'well-documented'. IMO is really bad readable mostly due to the fact that they made it a template class which adds a complexity to the implementation and documentation that is unnecessary for everyone who knows which char type he was using.

Also I don't share the idea that private implementations of a library can't have the same quality than a standard library. Actually I experienced more bugs and shortcomings of the various implementations of STL as it was with my own libraries which didn't change for years and are well-proved in many projects. For example all my containers were thread-safe and have no problems to be passed via dll boundaries. Last is, there was no alternative in the years before C++ standard ;-)


Regards, Alex

P.S.
This wasn't a pleading for self-made libraries or for not using STL. On the contrary, I am a consequent user of those standards wherever it is possible. But I wasn't afraid of making or using my own libraries if it was required by the project or by the customer. And the basic_string class actually is a poor string class.