lose the 'byte *'. Calls should not contain thier datatype unless you are specifically casting it to that type and then you need to wrap the data type in parenthesis or angle brackets. such that, strcat(byte* dest, ":"); becomes, strcat((byte*) dest, ":"); /*byte* is 'casted'*/ Otherwise, just plan ol' remove the byte* from your statement, resulting in: strcat(dest, ":"); Ideally, you should ensure your datatypes are the same whereever possible.