C++字符串完全指南 第二部分-字符串封装类(String Wrapper Classes)

1.简介
      因为C类型的字符串容易出错和难于管理，更不用提黑客经常利用这个进行缓冲区溢出攻击。现在存在很多字符的封装类。不幸的是，哪个类使用在哪种情况下不是很清楚，也不要把C类型的字符串直接转化成封装类。
      这篇文章将覆盖字符串封装类包括Win32 API, MFC, STL, WTL, 和the Visual C++ runtime library。我将描述每个类的使用方法。怎么去构造对象，怎么从一种类型转化成另一个类。
       为了更好的理解这篇文章，你必须理解不同字符的类型和编码，我在第一部分已经进行了介绍。

Rule # 1 of string classes
       直接转化是一个错误的想法，除非有明确的文档说明了这个情况。对一个字符进行转化对这个字符来说不会做任何改变，不要这么写：
void SomeFunc ( LPCWSTR widestr );
main()
{
          SomeFunc ( (LPCWSTR) "C://foo.txt" );  // WRONG!
}
这肯定会100%的失败，这个编译会通过，因为转化编译器不会进行类型检查，但是编译并不意味着代码正确。
      在接下来的例子中，我将指出转化在什么情况下是没有问题的。

C-style strings and typedefs
       就像我第一部分所说的那样，Windows APIs是预先定义好的的，TCHARs，它是在编译的时候根据你是否定义了_MBCS 或_UNICODE 宏来选择是MBCS或Unicode 字符。你可以通过第一部分得到TCHAR的全面描述，我将列出所有的字符类型定义。

Type	Meaning
WCHAR	Unicode character (wchar_t)
TCHAR	MBCS or Unicode character, depending on preprocessor settings
LPSTR	string of char (char*)
LPCSTR	constant string of char (const char*)
LPWSTR	string of WCHAR (WCHAR*)
LPCWSTR	constant string of WCHAR (const WCHAR*)
LPTSTR	string of TCHAR (TCHAR*)
LPCTSTR	constant string of TCHAR (const TCHAR*)

Here are the OLECHAR-related typedefs you will see:

Type	Meaning
OLECHAR	Unicode character (wchar_t)
LPOLESTR	string of OLECHAR (OLECHAR*)
LPCOLESTR	constant string of OLECHAR (const OLECHAR*)

There are also two macros used around string and character literals so that the same code can be used for both MBCS and Unicode builds:

Type	Meaning
_T(x)	Prepends L to the literal in Unicode builds.
OLESTR(x)	Prepends L to the literal to make it an LPCOLESTR.

There are also variants on _T that you might encounter in documentation or sample code. There are four equivalent macros -- TEXT, _TEXT, __TEXT, and __T -- that all do the same thing.

Strings in COM - BSTR and VARIANT

       许多自动化和其它的COM接口用BSTR来代替strings,但是BSTR有一些缺陷，在这里我将介绍BSTR.
       BSTR是Pascal类型(where the length is stored explicitly along with the data)的字符串和C类型where the string length must be calculated by looking for a terminating zero character).的字符串的混合体。BSTR 是一个Unicode类型的字符串，string预留了他它的长度，它也是以‘0’字符结尾的，这里有一个例子an example of "Bob" as a BSTR:

06 00 00 00	42 00	6F 00	62 00	00 00
--length--	B	o	b	EOS

        注意字符串的长度（length）存储在前面。COM库知道传输多少个数据(As a side note, a BSTR can hold any arbitrary block of data, not just characters, and can 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, the type 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 LPOLESTRs and BSTRs. 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.
          有许多APIs是用来操作BSTRs，但是最重要的两个函数是为BSTR分配和销毁空间，他们是SysAllocString() 和SysFreeString().SysAllocString() 把一个Unicode字符串拷贝到一个BSTR变量中， SysFreeString()是释放一个BSTR开辟的空间。

BSTR bstr = NULL; 
  bstr = SysAllocString ( L"Hi Bob!" ); 
  if ( NULL == bstr )
    // out of memory error 
  // Use bstr here... 
  SysFreeString ( bstr );
   很自然的，BSTR封装类接管了内存管理。
   另一个自动化的接口是VARIANT。它是用来在无类型的语言，比如JScript、VBScript传送数据的。一个
VARIANT可以包含许多的类型，比如long和IDispatch*。当一个VARIANT包含一个字符串，它就是一个BSTR.
对VARIANT我后面会讲的更详细。

String wrapper classes
Now that I've covered the various types of strings, I'll demonstrate the wrapper 
classes. For each one, I'll show how to construct an object and how to convert it t
o a C-style string pointer. The C-style pointer is often necessary for an API call, 
or to construct an object of a different string class. I will not cover other 
operators the 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, there is 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 class CComBSTR.
     A _bstr_t can be passed to a function that takes a BSTR, but only because of
 three 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 follows the BSTR format. So even though there is no documented conversion to 
BSTR, it happens to 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 those pointers 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 constructors 
and conversion functions to operate on the multitude of types that a VARIANT can 
contain. I will only cover 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, so be prepared to catch _com_error exceptions.
    Also note that there is no direct conversion from _variant_t 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 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 place 
of a VARIANT is allowed by C++ language rules.
STL classes
    STL just has one string class, basic_string. A basic_string manages a zero-terminated
 array 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 internal buffer, but any write operations must use 
basic_string operators and methods.
    There are two predefined specializations for basic_string: string, which 
contains chars, and wstring, which contains wchar_ts. 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 accepts the 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 
pass a CComBSTR object to COM methods, and the CComBSTR object will automatically 
manage the BSTR 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 converter
 to 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 in some
 STL collections, such as list. The collections require that the & operator return 
a 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; you can 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's data 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 an ATL conversion macro.
ATL conversion macros
ATL's string conversion macros are a very convenient way to convert between character
 encodings, and are especially useful in function calls. They are named according to
 the scheme [source type]2[new type] or [source type]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()
 converts a 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, since that 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 beginning of 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 into another 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 avoid memory
 leaks.
Here are some examples showing various conversion macros:

 
 

  
  
  
  Collapse
 
 
// 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 one format and the function takes a different format.
MFC classes
CString
An MFC CString holds TCHARs, so the exact character type depends on the preprocessor
 symbols you have defined. In general, a CString is like an STL string, in that you 
should treat 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, and it has a converter to LPCTSTR, so you 
can pass a CString object directly to a function that 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 do it, along with LoadString(). The Format() method can optionally read a 
format string from 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
 of casting a CString to an LPTSTR will only hurt yourself, as when the code does 
break later on, you might not see why, because you used the same code elsewhere and
 it happened to work. The correct way to get 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 call GetBuffer()
 on str. The parameter to GetBuffer() is the minimum length you want CString to 
allocate for the buffer. If for some reason you wanted a modifiable buffer large
 enough to hold 1K TCHARs, you would call GetBuffer(1024). Passing 0 as the length
 just returns a 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 the code is correct. By using the non-const cast, you're breaking
 object-oriented encapsulation and assuming something 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 you 
use 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 programmers writing incorrect code. Do you really want to 
write code you know is wrong, and thus contribute to the perception that all software
 is buggy? Take the time to learn the correct way of using a CString and have your
 code 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(). 
Aside from 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 from VARIANT, 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 
for LPCSTR and LPCWSTR. In most cases this is not a problem, since your strings 
will likely be LPCTSTRs anyway, but it is a point to be aware of. COleVariant also
 has a constructor that 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 the
 MFC CString above.
CLR and VC 7 classes
System::String is the .NET class for handling strings. Internally, a String object
 holds 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 Strings is that if you have more
 than one String containing the same series, of characters all of them actually
 refer the same object. The Managed Extensions to C++ have a new string literal 
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 efficient than when you construct a String object by passing a 
managed string. This is because all instances of 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 to use 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 has a 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 constructor that 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 need
 to 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 function that works the way printf() does. This includes sprintf() and its 
variants, as well as the TRACE and ATLTRACE macros. Because there is no type-checking
 done on the additional parameters 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 explicitly 
write 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 meaningless output, 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-style string pointer, and then pass the pointer to a constructor in the destination type. So here is a chart showing how to convert a string to a C-style pointer, and which classes can be constructed from C-style pointers.


 
 

            
Class 
            

            
string
type 
            

            
convert 
to char*? 
            

            
convert to
const char*? 
            

            
convert to
wchar_t*? 
            

            
convert to
const wchar_t*? 
            

            
convert
to BSTR? 
            

            
construct
from char*? 
            

            
construct
from wchar_t*? 
            

            
_bstr_t 
            

            
BSTR 
            

            
yes, cast1 
            

            
yes, cast 
            

            
yes, cast1 
            

            
yes, cast 
            

            
yes2 
            

            
yes 
            

            
yes 
            

            
_variant_t 
            

            
BSTR 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
cast to
_bstr_t3 
            

            
cast to
_bstr_t3 
            

            
yes 
            

            
yes 
            

            
string 
            

            
MBCS 
            

            
no 
            

            
yes, c_str()
method 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
yes 
            

            
no 
            

            
wstring 
            

            
Unicode 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
yes, c_str()
method 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
yes 
            

            
CComBSTR 
            

            
BSTR 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
yes, cast
to BSTR 
            

            
yes, cast 
            

            
yes 
            

            
yes 
            

            
CComVariant 
            

            
BSTR 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
yes4 
            

            
yes4 
            

            
yes 
            

            
yes 
            

            
CString 
            

            
TCHAR 
            

            
no6 
            

            
in MBCS
builds, cast 
            

            
no6 
            

            
in Unicode
builds, cast 
            

            
no5 
            

            
yes 
            

            
yes 
            

            
COleVariant 
            

            
BSTR 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
no 
            

            
yes4 
            

            
yes4 
            

            
in MBCS builds 
            

            
in Unicode builds 
            

            
1 Even though _bstr_t provides conversion operators to non-const pointers, modifying the underlying buffer may cause a GPF if you overrun the buffer, or a leak when the BSTR memory is freed.
2 A _bstr_t holds a BSTR internally in a wchar_t* variable, so you can use the const wchar_t* converter to retrieve the BSTR. This is an implementation detail, so use this with caution, as it may change in the future.
3 This will throw an exception if the data cannot be converted to a BSTR.
4 Use ChangeType() then access the bstrVal member of the VARIANT. In MFC, this will throw an exception if the data cannot be converted.
5 There is no BSTR conversion function, however the AllocSysString() method returns a new BSTR.
6 You can temporarily get a non-const TCHAR pointer using the GetBuffer() method. 
            


http://www.codeproject.com/KB/string/cppstringguide2.aspx