Removing part of a String^ in MFC C++ - string

Question

So far I've only written console applications. My first application using MFC (in Visual Studio 2010) is basically a form with two multiline boxes (using String[] arrays noted with String^) and a button to activate text processing. It should search the String^ for a [, look for the ] behind it and delete all characters between them (including the []). With 'normal' C++ strings, this isn't difficult. String^ however is more like an object and MSDN tells me to make use of the Remove method. So, I tried to implement it.
public ref class Form1 : public System::Windows::Forms::Form
{
public:
Form1(void)
{
InitializeComponent();
//
//TODO: Add the constructor code here
//
}
String^ DestroyCoords(String^ phrase)
{
int CoordsStart = 0;
int CoordsEnd = 0;
int CharCount = 0;
for each (Char ch in phrase)
{
if (ch == '[')
CoordsStart = CharCount;
if (ch == ']')
{
CoordsEnd = CharCount;
//CoordsEnd = phrase->IndexOf(ch);
phrase->Remove( CoordsStart , CoordsEnd-CoordsStart );
}
CharCount++;
}
return phrase;
}
The button using the method:
private: System::Void button1_Click(System::Object^ sender, System::EventArgs^ e) {
TempString = String::Copy(BoxInput->Text);
DestroyCoords(TempString);
BoxOutput->Text = TempString;
The function seems to hit the correct places at the correct time, but the phrase->Remove() method is doing absolutely nothing..
I'm no OO hero (as said, I normally only build console applications), so it's probably a rookie mistake. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

In C++/CLI, System::String is immutable, so Remove creates a new String^. This means you'll need to assign the results:
phrase = phrase->Remove( CoordsStart , CoordsEnd-CoordsStart );
The same is true in your usage:
TempString = DestroyCoords(TempString);
BoxOutput->Text = TempString;
Note that this will still not work, as you'd need to iterate through your string in reverse (as the index will be wrong after the first removal).

Answer 2

No MFC here, that's the C++/CLI that Microsoft uses for writing .NET programs in C++.
The .NET System::String class is immutable, so any operations you expect to modify the string actually return a new string with the adjustment made.
A further problem is that you're trying to modify a container (the string) while iterating through it. Instead of using Remove, have a StringBuilder variable and copy across the parts of the string you want to keep. This means only a single copy and will be far faster than repeated calls to Remove each of which makes a copy. And it won't interfere with iteration.
Here's the right approach:
int BracketDepth = 0;
StringBuilder sb(phrase->Length); // using stack semantics
// preallocated to size of input string
for each (Char ch in phrase)
{
if (ch == '[') { // now we're handling nested brackets
++BracketDepth;
}
else if (ch == ']') { // and complaining if there are too many closing brackets
if (!BracketDepth--) throw gcnew Exception();
}
else if (!BracketDepth) { // keep what's not brackets or inside brackets
sb.Append(ch);
}
}
if (BracketDepth) throw gcnew Exception(); // not enough closing brackets
return sb.ToString();