Question

After getting a struct from C# to C++ using C++/CLI:

public value struct SampleObject
{   
    LPWSTR a;    
};

I want to print its instance:

printf(sampleObject->a);

but I got this error:

Error 1 error C2664: ‘printf’ : cannot convert parameter 1 from
‘LPWSTR’ to ‘const char *’

How can I convert from LPWSTR to char*?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Don’t convert.

Use wprintf instead of printf:

• wprintf

See the examples which explains how to use it.

Alternatively, you can use std::wcout as:

wchar_t *wstr1= L"string";
LPWSTR   wstr2= L"string"; //same as above
std::wcout << wstr1 << L", " << wstr2;

Similarly, use functions which are designed for wide-char, and forget the idea of converting wchar_t to char, as it may loss data.

Have a look at the functions which deal with wide-char here:

• Unicode in Visual C++