std::string comparison versus int comparison

I did a search on google and, naturally, found nothing as I'm apparantly incapable of finding anything this specific.

Anyway, I've got an OpenGL texture manager. It's very basic and probably inefficient but it does the job -- basically tells me if I need to generate a new GLTexture from an Image resource.

I check this now by using an integer value which is generated when an Image resource is created. Simple enough.

However, all Resources as they're build contain a std::string with a unique name. Why not just compare the std::string's instead of an integer?

The question is, is there a significant difference between comapring a string with a string versus an integer with an integer or is the difference so trivial that it ultimately doesn't matter?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by leeor_net

The question is, is there a significant difference between comapring a string with a string versus an integer with an integer or is the difference so trivial that it ultimately doesn't matter?

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Comparing two strings can involve comparing all the characters in both of them, which could be considerably more expensive than just comparing two integers when the strings involved are long.

That's what I thought but I wanted to be sure. Thanks for the tip!

How are you checking the image vs previously created textures?