This is the maximum potential length the string can reach due to known system or library implementation limitations, but the object is not guaranteed to be able to reach that length: it can still fail to allocate storage at any point before that length is reached.

Parameters

Return Value

size_t is an unsigned integral type (the same as member type string::size_type).

Example

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// comparing size, length, capacity and max_size
#include <iostream>
#include <string>

int main ()
{
  std::string str ("Test string");
  std::cout << "size: " << str.size() << "\n";
  std::cout << "length: " << str.length() << "\n";
  std::cout << "capacity: " << str.capacity() << "\n";
  std::cout << "max_size: " << str.max_size() << "\n";
  return 0;
}

size: 11
length: 11
capacity: 15
max_size: 4294967291

Complexity

Iterator validity

Data races

Exception safety

See also

string::capacity

Return size of allocated storage (public member function)

string::size

Return length of string (public member function)

string::resize

Resize string (public member function)