More Assignment Methods

In addition to the basic assignment operator, the string class provides assign() methods, which allow you to assign a whole string or a part of a string or a sequence of identical characters to a string object. Here are the prototypes for the various assign() methods:

basic_string& assign(const basic_string& str);
basic string& assign(basic_string&& str) noexcept;   // C++11
basic_string& assign(const basic_string& str, size_type pos,
                     size_type n);
basic_string& assign(const charT* s, size_type n);
basic_string& assign(const charT* s);
basic_string& assign(size_type n, charT c); // assign n copies of c
template<class InputIterator>
  basic_string& assign(InputIterator first, InputIterator last);
basic_string& assign(initializer_list<charT>);  // C++11

Here are a couple examples:

string test;
string stuff("set tubs clones ducks");
test.assign(stuff, 1, 5);   // test is "et tu"
test.assign(6, '#");        // test is "######"

The assign() method with an rvalue reference (added by C++11) allows for move semantics, and the second new assign() method allows one to assign an initializer_list to a string object.