How to convert Platform::String to char*?

c++ character-encoding microsoft-metro windows-runtime c++-cx
djcouchycouch picture djcouchycouch · Jul 31, 2012 · Viewed 21.2k times · Source

How do I convert the contents of a Platform::String to be used by functions that expect a char* based string? I'm assuming WinRT provides helper functions for this but I just can't find them.

Thanks!

Answer

rysama picture rysama · Apr 12, 2013

Here is a very simple way to do this in code w/o having to worry about buffer lengths. Only use this solution if you are certain you are dealing with ASCII:

Platform::String^ fooRT = "aoeu";
std::wstring fooW(fooRT->Begin());
std::string fooA(fooW.begin(), fooW.end());
const char* charStr = fooA.c_str();

Keep in mind that in this example, the char* is on the stack and will go away once it leaves scope

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