How to Access Individual Characters in a C++ String?

C++ has in its definition a way to represent a sequence of characters as an object of the class. This class is called std:: string. The string class stores the characters as a sequence of bytes with the functionality of allowing access to the single-byte character. In this article, we are going to learn how to access individual characters in a C++ String.

Example

Input:
myString = "GeeksforGeeks";
Output:
4th Character = k

Access Individual Characters in a C++ String

In C++, you can access individual characters in a std::string using the array subscript [] operator. We need to just pass the index between the [] operator. Indexing of string starts with 0.

C++ Program to Access Individual Characters in a String

// C++ Program to Access Individual Characters in a String
#include <iostream>
#include <string>

// Driver Code
int main()
{
    std::string str = "Hello";

    // Accessing individual characters using iterators
    std::string::iterator it = str.begin();
    char firstChar = *it; // Accessing the first character

    // You can also use ++ operator to move the iterator
    ++it; // Move to the next character
    ++it; // Move to the third character
    char thirdChar = *it;

    std::cout << "First character: " << firstChar
              << std::endl;
    std::cout << "Third character: " << thirdChar
              << std::endl;

    return 0;
}

First character: H
Third character: l

Time complexity: O(1)
Space Complexity: O(1)