Junky CStrings

[Layla Nahar]

Hi - do you guys mind helping me again (I really tried my best to figure this out)

I've got the following code:

CString s;
s = " Hello ";
cout << s ; // junk value like 5f4dob14
char * b = "bob";
cout << b; // prints 'bob'
s=b;
cout << s; // new junk value like 002f2191c

I've been looking at my texbook; I can't see what I'm doing differently that would lead to these errors. I've also tried changing the project settings from MFC in a shared dll to MFC in a static library (in both debug and not debug versions) and the junk persists.

(note: for a little while I got some liking errors but I did something (like opening and closing the project) and haven't gotten those errors since. They said something about dlls and symbols not found. Sorry for not having more specific info on that.)

ps: thanks for the explanations about <iostream>. I'm using Visual Studio 6, but I'll stick with the new standards.

[gstercken]

CString s;
s = " Hello ";
cout << s ; // junk value like 5f4dob14

That's because iostream doesn't know CString. You have to cast the CString to a type known by the standard library, for example, const char* (or LPCTSTR):

CString s = "Hello";
cout << (LPCTSTR)s;

Note: This works since CString has an LPCTSTR conversion operator which is invoked by the cast. It gives read-only access to CString's internal character buffer.

[Ernst Lustig]

probably cout only works with plain strings.

try
cout << (LPCTSTR) s;

the cast makes CString to expose its buffer as a zero-terminated string.

[Layla Nahar]

thank you. that works.

I have another question, though, as a result. How can I avoid typing (LPCTSTR) before every CString in a cout statement? Is there something I can put in the header, or some kind of macro I can make?

Also, how do I read the "CODE" sections of posts here? I see a long horizontal box below the word CODE - but I can't select/highlight it ...

[Zim327]

Instead of using MFC's CString class
you can use the STL string class. Just #include <string>

and you do something like this

string x;
x = " Hi there! ";
cout << x.c_str();

[gstercken]

I have another question, though, as a result. How can I avoid typing (LPCTSTR) before every CString in a cout statement? Is there something I can put in the header, or some kind of macro I can make?

Not really... the problem is that you are mixing two class libraries: The C++ standard library, which has its own data type (std::string), and MFC, where CString belongs to.
Since you are using cout, you seem to be writing a console application - so I don't see why you would be using CString instead of std::string. MFC is an an application framework for Windows applications with a GUI, where you wouldn't use cout anyway.

Also, how do I read the "CODE" sections of posts here? I see a long horizontal box below the word CODE - but I can't select/highlight it ...

Not sure what you mean by "read"... that box contains text formatted as code (that is, with a fixed space font). You can select the text inside that box and copy it.

[Layla Nahar]

Hi Gsterken,

Thanks for the isight about mixing libraries. I'm using a textbook that starts off with just the console app - after a few chapters I won't be doing that anymore. I guess when the guy wrote it, he didn't need to do that (LPCTSTR) hack ...

on the topic of CODE tags - on my browser I don't see ANY text in the box below the word "Code:" - I thought maybe it was a link and I had to do something to enable the link ...

If I select the quote button I can read what's in the tags...

ps: This is really cool - If I use Safari, I can see the text in the text boxes, but I can't see the "Edit" button on my own posts! :P