Re: std::string in C-style in interface

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 10 Sep 2010 01:36:20 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<63ab69b3-4674-47c5-9bb7-9317f7ae6eaf@v23g2000vbi.googlegroups.com>
On Sep 9, 11:49 pm, Seungbeom Kim <musip...@bawi.org> wrote:

On 2010-09-08 23:53, Kai Wen wrote:

On 2010-09-09, SG <s.gesem...@gmail.com> wrote:

  vector<char> temp;
  temp.reserve(thestring.size()+1);
  temp.assign(thestring.begin(),thestring.end());
  temp.push_back('\0');
  foo(&temp[0]);
  thestring = &temp[0];


But I think this method is too complex. :-(


Maybe the four lines before calling foo can be shortened to two:

    const char *b = thestring.c_str(), *e = b + thestring.size() + 1;
    vector<char> temp(b, e);


Or even to:
    std::vector<char> temp(thestring.begin(), thestring.end());
Similarly, the last line could just as easily be:
    thestring.assign(temp.begin(), temp.end());

The best solution depends on context, however. If the legacy
function is actually returning a string value in the buffer (and
doesn't use the initial contents), something like the following
may be appropriate:

    std::string
    getCurrentWorkingDirectory()
    {
        std::vector<char> results( 1000 );
        errno = 0;
        while ( getcwd(&results[0], results.size() ) == NULL
                && errno == ERANGE) {
            results.resize( 2 * results.size() );
            errno = 0;
        }
        if ( errno != 0 )
            throw SomeError();
        return std::string( results.begin(), results.end() );
    }

(I've used the Posix function getcwd as an example, but of
course there are tons of functions for which this would be
appropriate, but under Posix and under Windows.)

--
James Kanze

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