How to convert PAnsiChar to WideString or string?

delphi delphi-7
Little Helper picture Little Helper · Apr 24, 2011 · Viewed 49.4k times · Source

How do I convert a PAnsiChar variable to WideString or to string?

Answer

David Heffernan picture David Heffernan · Apr 24, 2011

You simply assign one variable to another and let the Delphi compiler do all the conversion for you:

var
  p: PAnsiChar;
  s: string;
  w: WideString;
....
s := p;
w := p;

If you want to convert in the other direction, and restricting the discussion to Delphi 7 for which Char, PChar, string are all ANSI data types you would use the following:

PAnsiChar(s);
PAnsiChar(AnsiString(w));

The casts are needed when going in this direction and in the case of the WideString the data must be explicitly converted from Unicode to ANSI before asking for a null-terminated C string pointer.

Related questions

ms sql xml data type convert to text

in MS Sql there are data types that are not supported by delphi 7, the xml datatype is one example. I wish to convert the XML datatype to Text datatype, so that i could handle it in delphi. Is there a …

Read More
Delphi isNumber

Is there a method in Delphi to check if a string is a number without raising an exception? its for int parsing. and an exception will raise if one use the try StrToInt(s); except //exception handling end;

Read More
Delphi: StringList Delimiter is always a space character even if Delimiter is set

I am having trouble with the delimiter in the TStringList Class. Take a look: var s: string; sl: TStringList; begin sl := TStringList.Create; s := 'Users^foo bar^bar foo^foobar^barfoo'; sl.Delimiter := '^'; sl.DelimitedText := s; ShowMessage(sl[1]); …

Read More