What is the best way to convert between char* and System::String in C++/CLI

.net string c++-cli
Brian Stewart picture Brian Stewart · Sep 11, 2008 · Viewed 65.4k times · Source

What is the approved way to convert from char* to System::string and back in C++/CLI? I found a few references to marshal_to<> templated functions on Google, but it appears that this feature never made the cut for Visual Studio 2005 (and isn't in Visual Studio 2008 either, AFAIK). I have also seen some code on Stan Lippman's blog, but it's from 2004. I have also seen Marshal::StringToHGlobalAnsi(). Is there a method that is considered "best practice"?

Answer

Ben Straub picture Ben Straub · Sep 11, 2008

System::String has a constructor that takes a char*:

 using namespace system;
 const char* charstr = "Hello, world!";
 String^ clistr = gcnew String(charstr);
 Console::WriteLine(clistr);

Getting a char* back is a bit harder, but not too bad:

 IntPtr p = Marshal::StringToHGlobalAnsi(clistr);
 char *pNewCharStr = static_cast<char*>(p.ToPointer());
 cout << pNewCharStr << endl;
 Marshal::FreeHGlobal(p);

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