Convert CString to const char*

Solution 1:

To convert a TCHAR CString to ASCII, use the CT2A macro - this will also allow you to convert the string to UTF8 (or any other Windows code page):

// Convert using the local code page
CString str(_T("Hello, world!"));
CT2A ascii(str);
TRACE(_T("ASCII: %S\n"), ascii.m_psz);

// Convert to UTF8
CString str(_T("Some Unicode goodness"));
CT2A ascii(str, CP_UTF8);
TRACE(_T("UTF8: %S\n"), ascii.m_psz);

// Convert to Thai code page
CString str(_T("Some Thai text"));
CT2A ascii(str, 874);
TRACE(_T("Thai: %S\n"), ascii.m_psz);

There is also a macro to convert from ASCII -> Unicode (CA2T) and you can use these in ATL/WTL apps as long as you have VS2003 or greater.

See the MSDN for more info.

Solution 2:

If your CString is Unicode, you'll need to do a conversion to multi-byte characters. Fortunately there is a version of CString which will do this automatically.

CString unicodestr = _T("Testing");
CStringA charstr(unicodestr);
DoMyStuff((const char *) charstr);

Solution 3:

Note: This answer predates the Unicode requirement; see the comments.

Just cast it:

CString s;
const TCHAR* x = (LPCTSTR) s;

It works because CString has a cast operator to do exactly this.

Using TCHAR makes your code Unicode-independent; if you're not concerned about Unicode you can simply use char instead of TCHAR.

Solution 4:

There is an explicit cast on CString to LPCTSTR, so you can do (provided unicode is not specified):

CString str;
// ....
const char* cstr = (LPCTSTR)str;