This is not the only method missing from the standard library, it was intended be low level. This use case and many other are covered by general libraries such as:
QtCore & QString has my preference: it supports UTF8 and uses less templates, which means understandable errors and faster compilation. It uses the "q" prefix which makes namespaces unnecessary and simplifies headers.
Boost often generates hideous error messages and slow compile time.
POCO seems to be a reasonable compromise.