Question

I am reading a book and It told me to open a empty WIN32 project. I created source file called main.cpp and put it in the source folder (This is the only file I have in my project). In that file put the following code:

#include <windows.h>

int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
                  LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nShowCmd)
{
    MessageBox(NULL, "Motoko kusangai has hacked your system!", "Public Security Section 9", MB_OK | MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);
}

And run it. But I get the following error:

1>c:\users\numerical25\documents\visual studio 2008\projects\begin\begin\main.cpp(6) : error C2664: 'MessageBoxW' : cannot convert parameter 2 from 'const char [40]' to 'LPCWSTR'
1>        Types pointed to are unrelated; conversion requires reinterpret_cast, C-style cast or function-style cast
1>Build log was saved at "file://c:\Users\numerical25\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\Begin\Begin\Debug\BuildLog.htm"
1>Begin - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)
========== Build: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You need to use a wide string in this case because you are compiling for unicode. Try prefixing all of your string constants with L.

MessageBox(
  NULL, 
  L"Motoko kusangai has hacked your system!", 
  L"Public Security Section 9", 
  MB_OK | MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);