title: Using a custom allocator in std::string to re-use an already allocated char buffer
body: <p>I need to use an already allocated char* buffer (with the string content) in a std::string object. After some research I found that this is almost impossible and std::string would have its own private copy of data always. The only remaining way I can think of to do this is to use a custom allocator that will return the address of the already allocated char buffer. For this to work, std::string should only use the allocator to allocate memory to hold its string data and for nothing else. Is this the case? </p>