I have recently tried to convert an element of a string (built from digits only) to int and in order to avoid bizzare results (like 49 instead of 1) I had to use 'stringstream' (not even knowing what it is and how it works) instead of int variable = static_cast<int>(my_string_name[digit_position]);.
According to what I've read about these 'streams' the type is irrelevant when you use them so I guess that was the case. The question is: What type did I actually want to convert FROM and why didn't it work? I thought that a string element is a char but apparently not if the conversion didn't work.
I thought that a string element is a char but apparently not if the conversion didn't work.
Yes, it is a char. However, the value of this char is not how it is rendered on the screen. This actually depends on the encoding of the string. For example, if your string is encoded in ASCII, you can see that the "bizarre" 49 value that you got must have been represented as a '1' character. Building on that, you can subtract the ASCII code of the character '0' to get the numeric values of these characters. However, be very careful: this greatly depends on your encoding. It is possible that your string may use multi-byte characters when you can't even index them this naively.