Does an empty string contain an empty string in C++?

Question

Just had an interesting argument in the comment to one of my questions. My opponent claims that the statement \"\" does not contain \"\"<

Answer 1

Of course an empty string does not contain an empty string. It'll be turtles all the way down if it did.

Take String empty = ""; that is declaring a string literal that is empty, if you want a string literal to represent a string literal that is empty you would need String representsEMpty = """"; but of course, you need to escape it, giving you string actuallyRepresentsEmpty = "\"\"";

ps, I am taking a pragmatic approach to this. Leave the maths nonsense at the door.

Thinking about you amendment, it could be possible that your 'opponent' meant was that an 'empty' std::string still has an internal storage for characters which is itself empty of characters. That would be an implementation detail I am sure, it could perhaps just keep a certain size (say 10) array of characters 'just incase', so it will technically not be empty.

Of course, there is the trick question answer that 'nothing' fits into anything infinite times, a sort of 'divide by zero' situation.