std string length and size member functions

Question

While reading the responses to this topic, I discovered that although I always used size(), there is a function for std::string called length().

Is there a reason this function exists in the std::string class?

According to what I've read in MSDN and CppReference, there is no distinction between size() and length ().

If that's the case, doesn't it only make things more complicated for class users?

Answer 1

According to the documentation, they are just synonyms. size() exists to be compatible with other STL containers (such as vector, map, and so on), while length() exists to be consistent with most people's intuitive understanding of character strings. People normally talk about the length of a word, phrase, or paragraph, not its size, hence length() exists to make things more readable.