convert char to LPCWSTR

Question

char lpszUsername[255];
DWORD dUsername = sizeof(lpszUsername);
GetUserNameA(lpszUsername, &dUsername);
ret_status = NetUserGetInfo(pc_name, lpszUsername, 1, (LPBYTE*)&ui);

So I need char for GetUserNameA, but for NetUserGetInfo - LPCWSTR. WTF? How do I can convert char to this?

error C2664: 'NetUserGetInfo' : cannot convert parameter 2 from 'char [255]' to 'LPCWSTR'

Answer 1

See MSDN for the relevant conversion macros:

#include <AtlBase.h>

USES_CONVERSION;

char lpszUsername[255];
DWORD dUsername = sizeof(lpszUsername);
GetUserNameA(lpszUsername, &dUsername);

// A2W() should do it
ret_status = NetUserGetInfo(pc_name, A2W(lpszUsername), 1, (LPBYTE*)&ui);

Answer 2

LPCWSTR translates to english as: "Wide-character string", or wchar_t* in C.

To convert an ascii string to a wide-character string, you may need a special conversion function.

mbstowcs() may be what you need.

Answer 3

Consider using GetUserNameW instead of GetUserNameA. This will give you the current user's name in a wide-character string, eliminating the need to convert from ANSI to Unicode.

WCHAR lpwszUsername[255];
DWORD dUsername = sizeof(lpwszUsername) / sizeof(WCHAR);
GetUserNameW(lpwszUsername, &dUsername);
ret_status = NetUserGetInfo(pc_name, lpwszUsername, 1, (LPBYTE*)&ui);

Answer 4

I think Nick Meyer's answer solves your problem. But in general i found the following solution easiest for converting LPCSTR to LPCWSTR.

copy LPCSTR to a std::string. initialize a std::wstring with the std::string. get the LPCWSTR from c_str() of std::wstring.