Another string question?

What this C++ language-knowledge question tests

This is a medium-difficulty question that probes your working knowledge of C++ semantics and standard library behaviour. Rather than asking you to write code, it asks you to read and predict output—a skill that separates candidates who understand the language deeply from those who rely on trial-and-error.

Questions like this typically hinge on subtle but important details: operator precedence, reference vs. value semantics, string handling quirks, or less-commonly-used standard library methods. Success requires you to trace through the program mentally, accounting for side effects and type conversions. Interviewers use these to identify gaps in your foundational knowledge that might surface in production code or under time pressure.

• String construction and assignment
• Operator overloading and precedence
• Type conversions and implicit coercion
• Standard library method behaviour