Introduction
Since C-style strings can be error-prone and difficult to manage, not to mention a target for hackers lookingfor buffer overrun bugs, there are lots of string wrapper classes. Unfortunately, it's not always clear which classshould be used in some situations, nor how to convert from a C-style string to a wrapper class.
This article covers all the string types in the Win32 API, MFC, STL, WTL, and the Visual C++ runtime library.I will describe the usage of each class, how to construct objects, and how to convert to other classes. Nish hasalso contributed the section on managed strings and classes in Visual C++ 7.
In order to get the full benefit from this article, you must understand the different character typesand encodings, as I covered in Part I.
Rule #1 of string classes
Casts are bad, unless they are explicitly documented.
What prompted me to write these two articles was the frequent questions about how to convert string type X totype Z, where the poster was using a cast and didn't understand why the code didn't work. The various string types,especially BSTR
, are not concisely documented in any one place, so I imagine some people were throwingin casts and hoping it would work.
A cast does not do any conversion to a string, unless the source string is a wrapper class withan explicitly documented conversion operator. A cast of a string literal does nothing to the string, so writingsomething like:
void SomeFunc ( LPCWSTR widestr ); main() { SomeFunc ( (LPCWSTR) "C:\\foo.txt" ); // WRONG! }
will fail 100% of the time. It will compile, because the cast overrides the compiler's type-checking. But justbecause it compiles, doesn't mean the code is correct.
In the examples that follow, I will point out when casts are legal.
C-style strings and typedefs
As I covered in Part I, Windows APIs aredefined and documented in terms of TCHAR
s, which can be MBCS or Unicode characters depending on whetheryou define the _MBCS
or _UNICODE
symbol when compiling. You should refer to PartI for a full description of TCHAR
, but I will list the character typedefs here for convenience.
Type | Meaning |
---|---|
| Unicode character ( |
| MBCS or Unicode character, depending on preprocessor settings |
| string of |
| constant string of |
| string of |
| constant string of |
| string of |
| constant string of |
One additional character type is the OLECHAR
. This represents the character type used in Automationinterfaces (such as the interfaces exposed by Word so you can manipulate documents). This type is normally definedas wchar_t
, however if you define the OLE2ANSI
preprocessor symbol, OLECHAR
will be defined as the char
type. I know of no reason these days to define OLE2ANSI
(ithasn't been used by Microsoft since the days of MFC 3), so from now on I will treat an OLECHAR
asa Unicode character.
Here are the OLECHAR
-related typedefs you will see:
Type | Meaning |
---|---|
| Unicode character ( |
| string of |
| constant string of |
There are also two macros used around string and character literals so that the same code can be used for bothMBCS and Unicode builds:
Type | Meaning |
---|---|
| Prepends |
| Prepends |
There are also variants on _T
that you might encounter in documentation or sample code. There arefourequivalent macros-- TEXT
, _TEXT
, __TEXT
, and __T
--that all do the same thing.
Strings in COM - BSTR and VARIANT
Many Automation and other COM interfaces use BSTR
for strings, and BSTR
s have a fewpitfalls, so I will give BSTR
its own section here.
BSTR
is a hybrid between Pascal-style strings (where the length is stored explicitly along withthe data) and C-style strings (where the string length must be calculated by looking for a terminating zero character).A BSTR
is a Unicode string that has its length prepended, and is also terminated by a zero character.Here is an example of "Bob" as a BSTR
:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Notice how the length of the string is prepended to the string data. It is a DWORD
, and holds thenumber of bytes in the string, not counting the terminating zero. In this case, "Bob" contains3 Unicode characters (not counting the terminating zero), for a total of 6 bytes. The length field is present sothat when a BSTR
is marshaled between processes or computers, the COM library knows how much datato transfer. (As a side note, a BSTR
can hold any arbitrary block of data, not just characters, andcan contain embedded zero characters. However, for the purposes of this article, I will not consider such cases.)
A BSTR
variable in C++ is actually a pointer to the first character of the string. In fact, thetype BSTR
is defined this way:
typedef OLECHAR* BSTR;
This is very unfortunate, because in reality a BSTR
is not the same as a Unicode string.That typedef defeats type-checking and allows you to freely mix LPOLESTR
s and BSTR
s.Passing a BSTR
to a function expecting a LPCOLESTR
(or LPCWSTR
) is safe,however the reverse is not. Therefore, it's important to be aware of the exact type of string that a function expects,and pass the correct type of string.
To see why it is not safe to pass a LPCWSTR
to a function expecting a BSTR
, rememberthat the four bytes immediately before the string must store its length. There is no such length with a LPCWSTR
.If the BSTR
needs to be marshaled to another process (for example, an instance of Word that you arecontrolling), the COM library will look for that length and find garbage, or some other variable on your stack,or other random data. This will either cause the method to fail, or even crash if the perceived length is too long.
There are several APIs that operate on BSTR
s, however the two most important ones are the functionsthat create and destroy a BSTR
. They are SysAllocString()
and SysFreeString()
.SysAllocString()
copies a Unicode string into a BSTR
, while SysFreeString()
frees the memory used by a BSTR
.
BSTR bstr = NULL; bstr = SysAllocString ( L"Hi Bob!" ); if ( NULL == bstr ) // out of memory error // Use bstr here... SysFreeString ( bstr );
Naturally, the various BSTR
wrapper classes take care of the memory management for you.
The other type used in Automation interfaces is VARIANT
. This is used to send data between typelesslanguages like JScript and VBScript, as well as Visual Basic in some cases. A VARIANT
can containdata of many different types, such as long
and IDispatch*
. When a VARIANT
contains a string, it is stored as a BSTR
. I will have more to say about VARIANT
s whenI cover the VARIANT
wrapper classes later.
String wrapper classes
Now that I've covered the various types of strings, I'll demonstrate the wrapper classes. For each one, I'llshow how to construct an object and how to convert it to a C-style string pointer. The C-style pointer is oftennecessary for an API call, or to construct an object of a different string class. I will not cover other operatorsthe classes provide, such as sorting or comparison.
Once again, do not blindly cast objects unless you understand exactly what the resulting code will do.
Classes provided by the CRT
_bstr_t
_bstr_t
is a complete wrapper around a BSTR
, and in fact it hides the underlying BSTR
.It provides various constructors, as well as operators to access the underlying C-style string. However, thereis no operator to access the BSTR
itself, so a _bstr_t
cannot be passed as an [out]
parameter to COM methods. If you need a BSTR*
to use as a parameter, it is easier to the ATL classCComBSTR
.
A _bstr_t
can be passed to a function that takes a BSTR
, but only because ofthree coincidences. First, _bstr_t
has a conversion function to wchar_t*
; second, wchar_t*
and BSTR
appear the same to the compiler because of the definition of BSTR
; and third,the wchar_t*
that a _bstr_t
keeps internally points to a block of memory that followsthe BSTR
format. So even though there is no documented conversion to BSTR
, it happensto work.
// Constructing _bstr_t bs1 = "char string"; // construct from a LPCSTR _bstr_t bs2 = L"wide char string"; // construct from a LPCWSTR _bstr_t bs3 = bs1; // copy from another _bstr_t _variant_t v = "Bob"; _bstr_t bs4 = v; // construct from a _variant_t that has a string // Extracting data LPCSTR psz1 = bs1; // automatically converts to MBCS string LPCSTR psz2 = (LPCSTR) bs1; // cast OK, same as previous line LPCWSTR pwsz1 = bs1; // returns the internal Unicode string LPCWSTR pwsz2 = (LPCWSTR) bs1; // cast OK, same as previous line BSTR bstr = bs1.copy(); // copies bs1, returns it as a BSTR // ... SysFreeString ( bstr );
Note that _bstr_t
also has conversion operators for char*
and wchar_t*
.This is a questionable design, because even though those are non-constant string pointers, you must not use thosepointers to modify the buffer, because that could break the internal BSTR
structure.
_variant_t
_variant_t
is a complete wrapper around a VARIANT
, and provides many constructorsand conversion functions to operate on the multitude of types that a VARIANT
can contain. I will onlycover the string-related operations here.
// Constructing _variant_t v1 = "char string"; // construct from a LPCSTR _variant_t v2 = L"wide char string"; // construct from a LPCWSTR _bstr_t bs1 = "Bob"; _variant_t v3 = bs1; // copy from a _bstr_t object // Extracting data _bstr_t bs2 = v1; // extract BSTR from the VARIANT _bstr_t bs3 = (_bstr_t) v1; // cast OK, same as previous line
Note that the _variant_t
methods can throw exceptions if the type conversion cannot be made, sobe prepared to catch _com_error
exceptions.
Also note that there is no direct conversion from _variant_t
to an MBCS string. You will need tomake an interim _bstr_t
variable, use another string class that provides the Unicode to MBCS conversion,or use an ATL conversion macro.
Unlike _bstr_t
, a _variant_t
can be passed directly as a parameter to a COM method._variant_t
derives from the VARIANT
type, so passing a _variant_t
in placeof a VARIANT
is allowed by C++ language rules.
STL classes
STL just has one string class, basic_string
. A basic_string
manages a zero-terminatedarray of characters. The character type is given in the basic_string
template parameter. In general,a basic_string
should be treated as an opaque object. You can get a read-only pointer to the internalbuffer, but any write operations must use basic_string
operators and methods.
There are two predefined specializations for basic_string
: string
, which containschar
s, and wstring
, which contains wchar_t
s. There is no built-in TCHAR
specialization, but you can use the one listed below.
// Specializations typedef basic_string<TCHAR> tstring; // string of TCHARs // Constructing string str = "char string"; // construct from a LPCSTR wstring wstr = L"wide char string"; // construct from a LPCWSTR tstring tstr = _T("TCHAR string"); // construct from a LPCTSTR // Extracting data LPCSTR psz = str.c_str(); // read-only pointer to str's buffer LPCWSTR pwsz = wstr.c_str(); // read-only pointer to wstr's buffer LPCTSTR ptsz = tstr.c_str(); // read-only pointer to tstr's buffer
Unlike _bstr_t
, a basic_string
cannot directly convert between character sets. However,you can pass the pointer returned by c_str()
to another class's constructor if the constructor acceptsthe character type, for example:
// Example, construct _bstr_t from basic_string _bstr_t bs1 = str.c_str(); // construct a _bstr_t from a LPCSTR _bstr_t bs2 = wstr.c_str(); // construct a _bstr_t from a LPCWSTR
ATL classes
CComBSTR
CComBSTR
is ATL's BSTR
wrapper, and is more useful in some situations than _bstr_t
.Most notably, CComBSTR
allows access to the underlying BSTR
, which means you can passa CComBSTR
object to COM methods, and the CComBSTR
object will automatically manage theBSTR
memory for you. For example, say you wanted to call methods of this interface:
// Sample interface: struct IStuff : public IUnknown { // Boilerplate COM stuff omitted... STDMETHOD(SetText)(BSTR bsText); STDMETHOD(GetText)(BSTR* pbsText); };
CComBSTR
has an operator BSTR
method, so it can be passed directly to SetText()
.There is also an operator &
that returns a BSTR*
, so you can use the &
operator on a CComBSTR
object to pass it to a function that takes a BSTR*
.
CComBSTR bs1; CComBSTR bs2 = "new text"; pStuff->GetText ( &bs1 ); // ok, takes address of internal BSTR pStuff->SetText ( bs2 ); // ok, calls BSTR converter pStuff->SetText ( (BSTR) bs2 ); // cast ok, same as previous line
CComBSTR
has similar constructors to _bstr_t
, however there is no built-in converterto an MBCS string. For that, you can use an ATL conversion macro.
// Constructing CComBSTR bs1 = "char string"; // construct from a LPCSTR CComBSTR bs2 = L"wide char string"; // construct from a LPCWSTR CComBSTR bs3 = bs1; // copy from another CComBSTR CComBSTR bs4; bs4.LoadString ( IDS_SOME_STR ); // load string from string table // Extracting data BSTR bstr1 = bs1; // returns internal BSTR, but don't modify it! BSTR bstr2 = (BSTR) bs1; // cast ok, same as previous line BSTR bstr3 = bs1.Copy(); // copies bs1, returns it as a BSTR BSTR bstr4; bstr4 = bs1.Detach(); // bs1 no longer manages its BSTR // ... SysFreeString ( bstr3 ); SysFreeString ( bstr4 );
Note that in the last example, the Detach()
method is used. After calling that method, the CComBSTR
object no longer manages its BSTR
or the associated memory. That's why the SysFreeString()
call is necessary on bstr4
.
As a footnote, the operator &
override means you can't use CComBSTR
directly insome STL collections, such as list
. The collections require that the &
operator returna pointer to the contained class, but applying &
to a CComBSTR
returns a BSTR*
,not a CComBSTR*
. However, there is an ATL class to overcome this, CAdapt
. For example,to make a list of CComBSTR
, declare it like this:
std::list< CAdapt<CComBSTR> > bstr_list;
CAdapt
provides the operators required by the collection, but it is invisible to your code; youcan use bstr_list
just as if it were a list of CComBSTR
.
CComVariant
CComVariant
is a wrapper around a VARIANT
. However, unlike _variant_t
,the VARIANT
is not hidden, and in fact you need to access the members of the VARIANT
directly. CComVariant
provides many constructors to operate on the multitude of types that a VARIANT
can contain. I will only cover the string-related operations here.
// Constructing CComVariant v1 = "char string"; // construct from a LPCSTR CComVariant v2 = L"wide char string"; // construct from a LPCWSTR CComBSTR bs1 = "BSTR bob"; CComVariant v3 = (BSTR) bs1; // copy from a BSTR // Extracting data CComBSTR bs2 = v1.bstrVal; // extract BSTR from the VARIANT
Unlike _variant_t
, there are no conversion operators to the various VARIANT
types.As shown above, you must access the VARIANT
members directly and ensure that the VARIANT
holds data of the type you expect. You can call the ChangeType()
method if you need to convert a CComVariant
'sdata to a BSTR
.
CComVariant v4 = ... // Init v4 from somewhere CComBSTR bs3; if ( SUCCEEDED( v4.ChangeType ( VT_BSTR ) )) bs3 = v4.bstrVal;
As with _variant_t
, there is no direct conversion to an MBCS string. You will need to make an interim_bstr_t
variable, use another string class that provides the Unicode to MBCS conversion, or use anATL conversion macro.
ATL conversion macros
ATL's string conversion macros are a very convenient way to convert between character encodings, and are especiallyuseful in function calls. They are named according to the scheme [source type]2[new type]
or [sourcetype]2C[new type]
. Macros named with the second form convert to a constant pointer (thus the "C"in the name). The type abbreviations are:
A: MBCS string, char*
(A for ANSI)
W: Unicode string, wchar_t*
(W for wide)
T: TCHAR
string, TCHAR*
OLE: OLECHAR
string, OLECHAR*
(in practice, equivalent to W)
BSTR: BSTR
(used as the destination type only)
So, for example, W2A()
converts a Unicode string to an MBCS string, and T2CW()
convertsa TCHAR
string to a constant Unicode string.
To use the macros, first include the atlconv.h header file. You can do this even in non-ATL projects, sincethat header file has no dependencies on other parts of ATL, and doesn't require a _Module
global variable.Then, when you use a conversion macro in a function, put the USES_CONVERSION
macro at the beginningof the function. This defines some local variables used by the macros.
When the destination type is anything other than BSTR
, the converted string is stored on the stack,so if you want to keep the string around for longer than the current function, you'll need to copy the string intoanother string class. When the destination type is BSTR
, the memory is not automatically freed,so you must assign the return value to a BSTR
variable or a BSTR
wrapper class to avoidmemory leaks.
Here are some examples showing various conversion macros:
// Functions taking various strings: void Foo ( LPCWSTR wstr ); void Bar ( BSTR bstr ); // Functions returning strings: void Baz ( BSTR* pbstr ); #include <atlconv.h> main() { using std::string; USES_CONVERSION; // declare locals used by the ATL macros // Example 1: Send an MBCS string to Foo() LPCSTR psz1 = "Bob"; string str1 = "Bob"; Foo ( A2CW(psz1) ); Foo ( A2CW(str1.c_str()) ); // Example 2: Send a MBCS and Unicode string to Bar() LPCSTR psz2 = "Bob"; LPCWSTR wsz = L"Bob"; BSTR bs1; CComBSTR bs2; bs1 = A2BSTR(psz2); // create a BSTR bs2.Attach ( W2BSTR(wsz) ); // ditto, assign to a CComBSTR Bar ( bs1 ); Bar ( bs2 ); SysFreeString ( bs1 ); // free bs1 memory // No need to free bs2 since CComBSTR will do it for us. // Example 3: Convert the BSTR returned by Baz() BSTR bs3 = NULL; string str2; Baz ( &bs3 ); // Baz() fills in bs3 str2 = W2CA(bs3); // convert to an MBCS string SysFreeString ( bs3 ); // free bs3 memory }
As you can see, the macros are very handy when passing parameters to a function if you have a string in oneformat and the function takes a different format.
MFC classes
CString
An MFC CString
holds TCHAR
s, so the exact character type depends on the preprocessorsymbols you have defined. In general, a CString
is like an STL string
, in that you shouldtreat it as an opaque object and modify it only with CString
methods. One nice advantage CString
has over the STL string
is that it has constructors that accept both MBCS and Unicode strings, andit has a converter to LPCTSTR
, so you can pass a CString
object directly to a functionthat accepts an LPCTSTR
; there is no c_str()
method you have to call.
// Constructing CString s1 = "char string"; // construct from a LPCSTR CString s2 = L"wide char string"; // construct from a LPCWSTR CString s3 ( ' ', 100 ); // pre-allocate a 100-byte buffer, fill with spaces CString s4 = "New window text"; // You can pass a CString in place of an LPCTSTR: SetWindowText ( hwndSomeWindow, s4 ); // Or, equivalently, explicitly cast the CString: SetWindowText ( hwndSomeWindow, (LPCTSTR) s4 );
You can also load a string from your string table. There is a CString
constructor that will doit, along with LoadString()
. The Format()
method can optionally read a format stringfrom the string table as well.
// Constructing/loading from string table CString s5 ( (LPCTSTR) IDS_SOME_STR ); // load from string table CString s6, s7; // Load from string table. s6.LoadString ( IDS_SOME_STR ); // Load printf-style format string from the string table: s7.Format ( IDS_SOME_FORMAT, "bob", nSomeStuff, ... );
That first constructor looks odd, but that is actually the documented that way to load a string.
Note that the only legal cast you can apply to a CString
is a cast to LPCTSTR
.Casting to an LPTSTR
(that is, a non-const
pointer) is wrong. Getting in the habit ofcasting a CString
to an LPTSTR
will only hurt yourself, as when the code does break lateron, you might not see why, because you used the same code elsewhere and it happened to work. The correct way toget a non-const pointer to the buffer is the GetBuffer()
method.
As an example of the correct usage, consider the case of setting the text of an item in a list control:
CString str = _T("new text"); LVITEM item = {0}; item.mask = LVIF_TEXT; item.iItem = 1;item.pszText = (LPTSTR)(LPCTSTR) str;// WRONG! item.pszText = str.GetBuffer(0); // correct ListView_SetItem ( &item ); str.ReleaseBuffer(); // return control of the buffer to str
The pszText
member is an LPTSTR
, a non-const
pointer, therefore you callGetBuffer()
on str
. The parameter to GetBuffer()
is the minimum length youwant CString
to allocate for the buffer. If for some reason you wanted a modifiable buffer large enoughto hold 1K TCHAR
s, you would call GetBuffer(1024)
. Passing 0 as the length just returnsa pointer to the current contents of the string.
The crossed-out line above will compile, and it will even work, in this case. But that doesn't mean thecode is correct. By using the non-const
cast, you're breaking object-oriented encapsulation and assumingsomething about the internal implementation of CString
. If you make a habit of casting like that,you will eventually run into a case where the code breaks, and you'll wonder why it isn't working, because youuse the same code everywhere else and it (apparently) works.
You know how people are always complaining about how buggy software is these days? Bugs are caused by the programmerswriting incorrect code. Do you really want to write code you know is wrong, and thus contribute to the perceptionthat all software is buggy? Take the time to learn the correct way of using a CString
and have yourcode work 100% of the time.
CString
also has two functions that create a BSTR
from the CString
contents,converting to Unicode if necessary. They are AllocSysString()
and SetSysString()
. Asidefrom the BSTR*
parameter that SetSysString()
takes, they work identically.
// Converting to BSTR CString s5 = "Bob!"; BSTR bs1 = NULL, bs2 = NULL; bs1 = s5.AllocSysString(); s5.SetSysString ( &bs2 ); // ... SysFreeString ( bs1 ); SysFreeString ( bs2 );
COleVariant
COleVariant
is pretty similar to CComVariant
. COleVariant
derives fromVARIANT
, so it can be passed to a function that takes a VARIANT
. However, unlike CComVariant
,COleVariant
only has an LPCTSTR
constructor. There are not separate constructors forLPCSTR
and LPCWSTR
. In most cases this is not a problem, since your strings will likelybe LPCTSTR
s anyway, but it is a point to be aware of. COleVariant
also has a constructorthat accepts a CString
.
// Constructing CString s1 = _T("tchar string"); COleVariant v1 = _T("Bob"); // construct from an LPCTSTR COleVariant v2 = s1; // copy from a CString
As with CComVariant
, you must access the VARIANT
members directly, using the ChangeType()
method if necessary to convert the VARIANT
to a string. However, COleVariant::ChangeType()
throws an exception if it fails, instead of returning a failure HRESULT
code.
// Extracting data COleVariant v3 = ...; // fill in v3 from somewhere BSTR bs = NULL; try { v3.ChangeType ( VT_BSTR ); bs = v3.bstrVal; } catch ( COleException* e ) { // error, couldn't convert } SysFreeString ( bs );
WTL classes
CString
WTL's CString
behaves exactly like MFC's CString
, so refer to the description of theMFC CString
above.
CLR and VC 7 classes
System::String
is the .NET class for handling strings. Internally, a String
objectholds an immutable sequence of characters. Any String
method that supposedly manipulates the String
object actually returns a new String
object, because the original String
is immutable.A peculiarity of String
s is that if you have more than one String
containing the sameseries, of characters all of them actually refer the same object. The Managed Extensions to C++ have a new stringliteral prefix S
, which is used to represent a managed string literal.
// Constructing String* ms = S"This is a nice managed string";
You can construct a String
object by passing an unmanaged string, but this is slightly less efficientthan when you construct a String
object by passing a managed string. This is because all instancesof identical S
prefixed strings represent the same object, but this is not true for unmanaged strings.The following code will make this clear:
String* ms1 = S"this is nice"; String* ms2 = S"this is nice"; String* ms3 = L"this is nice"; Console::WriteLine ( ms1 == ms2 ); // prints true Console::WriteLine ( ms1 == ms3); // prints false
The right way to compare strings that may not have been created using S
prefixed strings is touse the String::CompareTo()
method as shown below:
Console::WriteLine ( ms1->CompareTo(ms2) ); Console::WriteLine ( ms1->CompareTo(ms3) );
Both the above lines will print 0, which means the strings are equal.
Converting between a String
and the MFC 7 CString
is easy. CString
hasa converter to LPCTSTR
and String
has two constructors that take a char*
and wchar_t*
, therefore you can pass a CString
straight to a String
constructor.
CString s1 ( "hello world" ); String* s2 ( s1 ); // copy from a CString
Converting the other way works similarly:
String* s1 = S"Three cats"; CString s2 ( s1 );
This might puzzle you a bit, but it works because starting with VS.NET, CString
has a constructorthat accepts a String
object:
CStringT ( System::String* pString );
For some speedy manipulations, you might sometimes want to access the underlying string:
String* s1 = S"Three cats"; Console::WriteLine ( s1 ); const __wchar_t __pin* pstr = PtrToStringChars(s1); for ( int i = 0; i < wcslen(pstr); i++ ) (*const_cast<__wchar_t*>(pstr+i))++; Console::WriteLine ( s1 );
PtrToStringChars()
returns a const __wchar_t*
to the underlying string which we needto pin down as otherwise the garbage collector might move the string in memory while we are manipulating its contents.
Using string classes with printf-style formatting functions
You must pay careful attention when using string wrapper classes with printf()
or any functionthat works the way printf()
does. This includes sprintf()
and its variants, as well asthe TRACE
and ATLTRACE
macros. Because there is no type-checking done on the additionalparameters to the functions, you must be careful to only pass a C-style string pointer, not a complete string object.
So for example, to pass a string in a _bstr_t
to ATLTRACE()
, you must explicitlywrite the (LPCSTR)
or (LPCWSTR)
cast:
_bstr_t bs = L"Bob!"; ATLTRACE("The string is: %s in line %d\n", (LPCSTR) bs, nLine);
If you forget the cast and pass the entire _bstr_t
object, the trace message will display meaninglessoutput, since what will be pushed on the stack is whatever internal data the _bstr_t
variable keeps.
Summary of all the classes
The usual way of converting between two string classes is to take the source string, convert it to a C-stylestring pointer, and then pass the pointer to a constructor in the destination type. So here is a chart showinghow to convert a string to a C-style pointer, and which classes can be constructed from C-style pointers.
Class | string | convert | convert to | convert to | convert to | convert | construct | construct |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| yes, cast1 | yes, cast | yes, cast1 | yes, cast | yes2 | yes | yes |
|
| no | no | no | cast to | cast to | yes | yes |
| MBCS | no | yes, | no | no | no | yes | no |
| Unicode | no | no | no | yes, | no | no | yes |
|
| no | no | no | yes, cast | yes, cast | yes | yes |
|
| no | no | no | yes4 | yes4 | yes | yes |
|
| no6 | in MBCS | no6 | in Unicode | no5 | yes | yes |
|
| no | no | no | yes4 | yes4 | in MBCS builds | in Unicode builds |
1 Even though |
License
This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.
A list of licenses authors might use can be found here
About the Authors
Michael Dunn![]()
Software Developer (Senior)
VMware ![]() Member | Michael lives in sunny Mountain View, California. He started programming with an Apple //e in 4th grade, graduated from UCLA with a math degree in 1994, and immediately landed a job as a QA engineer at Symantec, working on the Norton AntiVirus team. He pretty much taught himself Windows and MFC programming, and in 1999 he designed and coded a new interface for Norton AntiVirus 2000. Mike has been a a developer at Napster and at his own lil' startup, Zabersoft, a development company he co-founded with offices in Los Angeles and Odense, Denmark. Mike is now a senior engineer at VMware. He also enjoys his hobbies of playing pinball, bike riding, photography, and Domion on Friday nights (current favorite combo: Village + double Pirate Ship). He would get his own snooker table too if they weren't so darn big! He is also sad that he's forgotten the languages he's studied: French, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. Mike was a VC MVP from 2005 to 2009. |
Nish Sivakumar![]() ![]() Member | Nish is a real nice guy who has been writing code since 1990 when he first got his hands on an 8088 with 640 KB RAM. Originally from sunny Trivandrum in India, he has been living in various places over the past few years and often thinks it’s time he settled down somewhere. Nish has been a Microsoft Visual C++ MVP since October, 2002 - awfully nice of Microsoft, he thinks. He maintains an MVP tips and tricks web site - www.voidnish.com where you can find a consolidated list of his articles, writings and ideas on VC++, MFC, .NET and C++/CLI. Oh, and you might want to check out his blog on C++/CLI, MFC, .NET and a lot of other stuff - blog.voidnish.com. Nish loves reading Science Fiction, P G Wodehouse and Agatha Christie, and also fancies himself to be a decent writer of sorts. He has authored a romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket as well as a programming book – Extending MFC applications with the .NET Framework. Nish's latest book C++/CLI in Action published by Manning Publications is now available for purchase. You can read more about the book on his blog. Despite his wife's attempts to get him into cooking, his best effort so far has been a badly done omelette. Some day, he hopes to be a good cook, and to cook a tasty dinner for his wife. |