Question

Sigh

I am working with the Microsoft Visual Express C++ IDE. I have recently transitioned from DevC++ to this IDE.

I have a function that works perfectly in DevC++ but in MSVC++ it wont compile because of Unicode (I think?). What do I need to change to get my function to compile?

See the commented code line for the compiler error I get

map <string, string> GetEvironmentVariablesEx()
{
   map <string, string> envVariables;
   char* environVar = GetEnvironmentStrings();  // Compile error: error C2440: 'initializing' : cannot convert from 'LPWCH' to 'char *'
   char* pos        = strchr( environVar, '\0' );

   // Skip over the "=::=::\0" of the environVar string
   if ( pos != NULL ) { environVar = ++pos; pos = strchr( environVar, '\0' ); }
   else return envVariables;

   while ( true )
   {
       char* delim    = strchr( environVar, '=' );
       if ( delim == NULL )
            break;

       string variable = string( environVar, strlen(environVar)-strlen(delim) );
       string value    = string( ++delim );

       envVariables.insert( pair<string, string>(variable, value) );
       environVar = ++pos;

       // find the "\0\0" that identifies the end of environVar
       if ( pos != NULL && *pos == 0 ) { break; }

       pos = strchr( environVar, '\0' );
   }

   FreeEnvironmentStrings( environVar ); 
   return envVariables;       
}

PS: Because this application is compiled in Unicode, does that mean that it will work on both ANSII computers & UNICODE computers – so my app will able to be run internationally?

Answer 1

your project is a UNICODE build and you using ANSI strings, first thing to do is replacing your char variables to TCHAR and try again.

And as @David Heffernan, aptly suggested, you will have to switch to wstring and aptly change the library functions from standard library which you use.