How to convert QString to std::string?

I am trying to do something like this:

QString string;
// do things...
std::cout << string << std::endl;

but the code doesn't compile. How to output the content of qstring into the console (e.g. for debugging purposes or other reasons)? How to convert QString to std::string?

You can use:

QString qs;
// do things
std::cout << qs.toStdString() << std::endl;

It internally uses QString::toUtf8() function to create std::string, so it's Unicode safe as well. Here's reference documentation for QString.

One of the things you should remember when converting QString to std::string is the fact that QString is UTF-16 encoded while std::string... May have any encodings.

So the best would be either:

QString qs;

// Either this if you use UTF-8 anywhere
std::string utf8_text = qs.toUtf8().constData();

// or this if you're on Windows :-)
std::string current_locale_text = qs.toLocal8Bit().constData();

The suggested (accepted) method may work if you specify codec.

See: http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qstring.html#toLatin1

If your ultimate aim is to get debugging messages to the console, you can use qDebug().

You can use like,

qDebug()<<string; which will print the contents to the console.

This way is better than converting it into std::string just for the sake of debugging messages.