C++ MFC- strcpy error

Question

I'm fairly new to C++ MFC programming. I'm having a hard time on understanding the code of C++. Just came from Java programming and it seems a whole new world to me. This is a long way from Android development.

Can you guys help me understand this problem here?

Here is the complete code

CString c;
code.GetWindowText(c);
AfxMessageBox(c);

OpenClipboard();
EmptyClipboard();

// Setup a memory HANDLE for the clipboard
HANDLE hMem = GlobalAlloc(GMEM_FIXED, c.GetLength() + 1);
char* pStr = (char*)GlobalLock(hMem); 
strcpy(pStr, c); //error here 
GlobalUnlock(hMem);

// Tell Clipboard to use our handle now.
::SetClipboardData(CF_TEXT, hMem);

CloseClipboard();

This part of the function copies the CString and assigns it to the clipboard. I'm getting the error

no suitable conversion function from CString to const char* exist.

I had an online reference and this is the code and other comments didn't seem to have the same problem. I'm wondering what the heck is wrong with mine.

Answer 1

The default build these days is Unicode, which uses 16-bit wchar_t characters that are incompatible with the char type.

CString comes in two specialized variants, CStingA for char characters and CStringW for wchar_t characters. If you use CStringA it will allow an automatic conversion to const char * .

A better way to go would be to use CF_UNICODETEXT and keep using the normal CString . You'll need to use wcscpy in place of strcpy , and allocate twice the number of bytes.