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Last updated：2026-10-12

STL string interview questions in depth

Today I am sharing a string-related interview question with a total of 4 cases. You can leave a comment in the discussion section saying what will happen in each of these four places.

Everyone should be quite familiar with std::string, and std::string_view is a view introduced after C++17 — look it up if you are not familiar with it. Below are two literals, a string literal and a string_view literal, represented by s and sv.

The first two questions both involve a function returning a std::string_view, but with a difference: one is based on a c-style string, the other on a string.

The last two questions involve construction from a string literal and a string_view literal.

Alright, the problem is now described clearly — see you in the comments~

std::string_view getBar() {
  std::string b{"it is bar."};
  return b;
}

std::string_view getFoo() {
  return "It is foo.";
}

using namespace std::string_literals;
using namespace std::string_view_literals;
std::cout << getFoo() << std::endl;   // 1
std::cout << getBar() << std::endl;   // 2
std::string_view svf{"Hello foo"s};  
std::cout << svf << std::endl;              // 3
std::string_view svff{"Hello foo"sv}; 
std::cout << svff << std::endl;             // 4

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