I am trying to store some contents into a string variable by passing it as a parameter in various types of Windows API functions which accepts variable like char *.
For example, my code is:-
std::string myString;
GetCurrentDirectoryA( MAX_PATH, myString );
Now how do I convert the string variable to LPSTR in this case.
Please see, this function is not meant for passing the contents of string as input, but the function stores some contents into string variable after execution. So, myString.c_str( ) is ruled out.
Edit: I have a workaround solution of removing the concept of string and replacing it with something like
char myString[ MAX_PATH ];
but that is not my objective. I want to make use of string. Is there any way possible?
Also casting like
GetCurrentDirectoryA( MAX_PATH, ( LPSTR ) myString );
is not working.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Usually, people rewrite the Windows functions they need to be std::string friendly, like this:
std::string GetCurrentDirectoryA()
{
char buffer[MAX_PATH];
GetCurrentDirectoryA( MAX_PATH, buffer );
return std::string(buffer);
}
or this for wide char support:
std::wstring GetCurrentDirectoryW()
{
wchar_t buffer[MAX_PATH];
GetCurrentDirectoryW( MAX_PATH, buffer );
return std::wstring(buffer);
}
LPTSTR is defined as TCHAR*, so actually it is just an ordinary C-string, BUT it depends on whether you are working with ASCII or with Unicode in your code. So do
LPTSTR lpStr = new TCHAR[256];
ZeroMemory(lpStr, 256);
//fill the string using i.e. _tcscpy
const char* cpy = myString.c_str();
_tcscpy (lpStr, cpy);
//use lpStr
See here for a reference on _tcscpy and this thread.
Typically, I would read the data into a TCHAR and then copy it into my std::string. That's the simplest way.
Related
I would like to ask how can I get a text input from TEdit control and cast it to std::string (not AnsiString).
For example, if I have a TEdit control with the name User, I get the text from it with the User->Text command. What I want to do is to assign that value to a std::string, for example string my_str = User->Text;.
I would like to ask, how can I do this in C++ Builder? Is there some sort of a ToString() method or sort of, because I was not able to find one.
In C++Builder 2007 and earlier, TEdit::Text is an 8-bit AnsiString in the user's default ANSI locale. It is very straight forward to convert an AnsiString to a std::string - just use the AnsiString::c_str() method to get a null-terminated char* pointer to the AnsiString data, and then you can assign that to the std::string, eg:
std::string my_str = User->Text.c_str();
/* or:
System::AnsiSystem text = User->Text;
std::string my_str(text.c_str(), text.Length());
*/
If you want the std::string data to be in another character encoding, such as UTF-8, then you will have to convert the AnsiString data accordingly, such as with MultiByteToWideChar()/WideCharToMultiByte(), UTF8Encode(), etc, before assigning it to the std::string.
In C++Builder 2009 and later, TEdit::Text is a 16-bit UnicodeString in UTF-16 format. The easiest way to convert a UnicodeString to a std::string is to first convert to an AnsiStringT<CP> (where CP is the desired ANSI codepage - AnsiString uses CP=0, UTF8String uses CP=65001, etc), and then convert that to std::string, eg:
std::string my_str = AnsiString(User->Text).c_str(); // or UTF8String, etc...
/* or:
System::AnsiString text = User->Text; // or UTF8String, etc...
std::string my_str(text.c_str(), text.Length());
*/
Alternatively, in C++11 and later, you can convert the UnicodeString to a std::wstring first, and then use std::wstring_convert, eg:
#include <locale>
std::wstring my_wstr = User->Text.c_str();
/* or:
System::UnicodeString text = User->Text;
std::wstring my_wstr(text.c_str(), text.Length());
*/
// System::Char may be either wchar_t or char16_t, depending
// on which platform you are compiling for...
std::string my_str = std::wstring_convert<std::codecvt_utf8_utf16<System::Char>>{}.to_bytes(my_wstr);
I had a lot of those to migrate from Borland to Embarcadero Rio. So I created a method to do it.
#include <cwchar.h> //std::wcslen
char* __fastcall AnsiOf(wchar_t* w)
{
static char c[STR_CONV_BUF_SIZE];
memset(c, 0, sizeof(c));
WideCharToMultiByte(CP_ACP, WC_NO_BEST_FIT_CHARS, w, std::wcslen(w), c, STR_CONV_BUF_SIZE, NULL, NULL);
return c;
}
std::string my_str = AnsiOf((User->Text).c_str());
Ok, so I'm using C++ to make a library that'd help me to print lines into a console.
So, I want to override " "(quote operators) to create an std::string instead of the string literal, to make it easier for me to append other data types to that string I want to output.
I've seen this done before in the wxWidgets with their wxString, but I have no idea how I can do that myself.
Is that possible and how would I go about doing it?
I've already tried using this code, but with no luck:
class PString{
std::string operator""(const char* text, std::size_t len) {
return std::string(text, len);
}
};
I get this error:
error: expected suffix identifier
std::string operator""(const char* text, std::size_t len) {
^~
which, I'd assume, want me to add a suffix after the "", but I don't want that. I want to only use ""(quotes).
Thanks!
You can't use "" without defining a suffix. "" is a const char* by itself either with a prefix (like L"", u"", U"", u8"", R"()") or followed by suffixes like (""s, ""sv, ...) which can be overloaded.
The way that wxString works is set and implicit constructor wxString::wxString(const char*); so that when you pass "some string" into a function it is essentially the same as wxString("some string").
Overriding operator ""X yields string literals as the other answer.
I am writing small application which uses com technology. I want to convert BSTR string to an unsigned char. To do this, i used W2A() Macro to convert from BSTR to String and then copied String.C_STR() to an unsigned char array. The code snippet is as follows:
Send(BSTR *packet, int length)
{
std::string strPacket = W2A(*packet);
unsigned char * pBuffer = new unsigned char [strPacket.length()+1];
memset(pBuffer,0,strPacket.length()+1);
memcpy(pBuffer,strPacket.c_str(),strPacket.length()+1);
}
This works fine when packet contains normal string. But if the packet contains a NUL character in it, the problem occurs. Some unknown characters appear after that NUL in the pBuffer i.e, after conversion.
Can anyone please let me know how to avoid that? Or is there any other way to do it correctly?
A BSTR is a Windows API type and must be managed with API macros or functions. If you cannot use W2A macro because your string may have null chars inside, you will have to use functions as WideCharToMultiByte that can convert from wide characters of BSTR to narrow chararacters for a char*. Be sure to have the SDK documentation. Alternatively, you could make you program use WCHARs
BYTE name[1000];
In my visual c++ project there is a variable defined name with the BYTE data type. If i am not wrong then BYTE is equivalent to unsigned char. Now i want to convert this unsigned char * to LPCTSTR.
How should i do that?
LPCTSTR is defined as either char const* or wchar_t const* based on whether UNICODE is defined or not.
If UNICODE is defined, then you need to convert the multi-byte string to a wide-char string using MultiByteToWideChar.
If UNICODE is not defined, a simple cast will suffice: static_cast< char const* >( name ).
This assumes that name is a null-terminated c-string, in which case defining it BYTE would make no sense. You should use CHAR or TCHAR, based on how are you operating on name.
You can also assign 'name' variable to CString object directly like:
CString strName = name;
And then you can call CString's GetBuffer() or even preferably GetString() method which is more better to get LPCTSTR. The advantage is CString class will perform any conversions required automatically for you. No need to worry about Unicode settings.
LPCTSTR pszName = strName.GetString();
I'm trying to parse a SHGetSpecialFolderPath into a string, a System::String^ to be precise.
I'm now using this code:
TCHAR appDataPath;
SHGetSpecialFolderPath(0, appDataPath, CSIDL_APPDATA, false);
I've tried things like this, but it doesn't work either:
LPWSTR appDataPath;
SHGetSpecialFolderPath(0, appDataPath, CSIDL_APPDATA, false);
I just want to get a System::String^ like this:
System::String ^ loc_inst = appDataPath + "\\inst\\info.xml";
I don't think C++/CLI can automatically concatenate char arrays and assign them to a string handle. I think you need to instantiate a new System::String object like this:
System::String^ loc_inst = gcnew System::String(appDataPath);
loc_inst.Append("\\inst\\info.xml");
Or you could use a StringBuilder, but if you want to make a new String object I think you've got to use gcnew and a constructor.
Keep in mind that appDataPath is not a String but a char array that you have previously allocated. However, System::String allows you to pass in char arrays in one of its constructors.