Question

I’ve tried implementing a function like this, but unfortunately it doesn’t work:

const wchar_t *GetWC(const char *c)
{
    const size_t cSize = strlen(c)+1;
    wchar_t wc[cSize];
    mbstowcs (wc, c, cSize);

    return wc;
}

My main goal here is to be able to integrate normal char strings in a Unicode application. Any advice you guys can offer is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Use a std::wstring instead of a C99 variable length array. The current standard guarantees a contiguous buffer for std::basic_string. E.g.,

std::wstring wc( cSize, L'#' );
mbstowcs( &wc[0], c, cSize );

C++ does not support C99 variable length arrays, and so if you compiled your code as pure C++, it would not even compile.

With that change your function return type should also be std::wstring.

Remember to set relevant locale in main.

E.g., setlocale( LC_ALL, "" ).