Replace backward slashes with forwards slashes or double backward slashes in C++

Question

So I have a string:

string path = "C:\Users\Richard\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\Client\Debug";

I want to replace all backward slashes in it with forward ones so it looks like:

C:/Users/Richard/Documents/Visual Studio 2010/Projects/Client/Debug

This does not work:

string toReplace = "\\";
path.replace(path.find(toReplace), toReplace.length(), "/");

Obviously, \ is an escape character so that is probably causing the problem.

Answer 1

I get a compiler error on your path string with g++, since it contains invalid escape codes. Apparently, MSVC produces warnings but no errors for that (see Michael Burr's answer). So if you are really using the path you have posted, change the backslashes to double backslashes.

Correcting that, I find that your code replaces only the first backslash and leaves the others. Maybe you want to use std::replace(), like so:

std::replace(path.begin(), path.end(), '\\', '/');