How to Convert CString to char array?

[TechAvtar]

I Have a CString which contains port names. CString cs = "COM1"; char portname[5]; 1. What is the memory representation of cs above (I have this question since I think it is multibyte/wide char)? 2. How to copy above cs into portname ? I need portname to contain {'C','O','M','1','\0'} Thanks JC

[Yusuf]

Look CString Management[^].

Yusuf May I help you?

[MS_TJ]

TCHAR path[ MAX_PATH ]; Cstring str; _tcscpy(path, str);

[Iain Clarke Warrior Programmer]

1/ The memory representation will change depending on whether the UNICODE define is there or not. The default changes depending on which version of Visual studio you have. VS6, it's char. I think all later ones, it's w_char, or 16bits. 2/ There's a conversion to LPCTSTR operator in the CString class, so you can pass it to const TCHAR * parameters of other functions. So, your question is trivial:

lstrcpy (szBufferOut, sMyString);

Have a look at the following article for more help: The Complete Guide to C++ Strings, Part I - Win32 Character Encodings[^] Good luck, Iain.

I have now moved to Sweden for love (awwww).

[Aescleal]

Hi, You've got two problems here: - Converting from potentially wide to narrow charcaters - Getting rid of any const The first means that you can't use something like _tcscpy and TCHARs as you want real, honest, chars, not chars or wchar_ts depending on some preprocessor macro. The second means you've got to do a real copy and you can't just use an implicit conversion. To solve the second problem you've got to do a copy. To solve the first you either copy the string using wcstombs or strcpy depending on whether the CString is encoded as unicode as not. You can either use the preprocessor to select which function you use, but that's really sucky like most uses of the preprocessor in C++ (avoid it like the plague) or you can use function overloading:

void to_narrow( const CStringA &to_convert, char *out )
{
...
}

void to_narrow( const CStringW &to_convert, char *out )
{
...
}

I haven't bothered including the code as there's another way you can do the conversion which relies more on the C++ standard library and has less pointers flopping about and confusing the issue. In this version I'm returning a std::vector as it sorts out any memory management for the caller:

std::vector<char> to_narrow( const CStringA &to_convert )
{
const char *convert_start = to_convert;
const char *convert_end = convert_start + to_convert.GetLength() + 1;

return std::vector<char>( convert\_start, convert\_end );

}

std::vector<char> to_narrow( const CStringW &to_convert )
{
const wchar_t *convert_start = to_convert;

std::vector<char> output( to\_convert.GetLength() \* 4 + 1 );
output.resize( wcstombs( &output\[ 0 \], to\_convert, output.size() ) );
return output;

}

The supperfluous +1s everywhere are due to CString::GetLength not including the terminating '\0' character in the length. The *4 is just in case Microsoft ever support utf-8 as a character set - it gives the oodles of space for really weird characters Any questions just shout. Cheers, Ash PS: This code was written from memory and isn't tested, there might be some problems but the idea's sound and in use all over the place.