std::string to LPCTSTR

Question

New version of the typical question of how to convert from std::string to LPCTSTR.

Reading from different SO posts I learnt that I should do this:

CreateDirectory(path.c_str(),NULL);

And still the compiler gives error because cannot convert from const char * to LPCTSTR.

I tried:

CreateDirectory((LPCTSTR)path.c_str(),NULL);

No errors!

Still the directory created (in the correct place) is called:

D:\\something\\㩄ぜ弲久䅓余屓䱆彄湡敤屲䵉ⴱ㠶ⴰⵃㅇ㉜洰⵭就䥄牃獥汵獴촀췍췍췍췍췍췍췍﷍﷽꯽ꮫꮫꮫﺫﻮﻮ

which is not exactly what I wanted, as you can guess...

So what am I missing? Is it something related with UNICODE/ANSI? How can I resolve this?

Answer 1

Try to look at this page: What-are-TCHAR-WCHAR-LPSTR-LPWSTR-LPCTSTR-etc. If you are using MSVC, than you may have set Unicode for project and LPCSTR is "translated" to const wchar_t *, which is not compatible with const char *

By doing this: (LPCTSTR)path.c_str() you are taking two chars from original string and create from them one unicode wchar_t letter. Thats way you are getting "chinese" characters.

Answer 2

Your problem here is the fact that LPCTSTR is resolved to wchar_t* or char* based on whether your build supports unicode (unicode flag set or not).

To explicitly call the char* version, call CreateDirectoryA().