Parse string to LPCWSTR

Question

I am working with boost-filesystem to search all the files in a concrete path. I also want to retrieve this file's creation data, last opening and last update so as I am working in Windows I need to use the GetFileTime (which requires a HANDLE that I will get by the CreateFile function.

The point is that by boost filesystem I get a string such as

string filename="C:\Users\MyUser\Desktop\PDN.pdf";

and I need to convert this string to a LPCWSTR.

Because of this I have done several tries which have all failed, for example:

HANDLE hFile = CreateFile((LPCWSTR)fileName.c_str(), GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, NULL, NULL);

But when doing this, it succeded:

HANDLE hFile = CreateFile(L"C:\\Users\\MyUSer\\Desktop\\PDN.pdf", GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, NULL, NULL);

So my question is, how could I parse a string to a PWSTR using a string variable? And if possible (I guess no), is there any function that will change the original path adding a slash where finds another slash?

Thanks a lot

EDITED: This is the way I have done it after what I have read in here:

wstring fileFullPathWstring = winAPII.stringToWstring(iter->path().string());

HANDLE hFile = CreateFile(fileFullPathWstring.c_str(), GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, NULL, NULL);

Using the function:

wstring WinAPIIteraction::stringToWstring(string stringName){
    int len;
    int slength = (int)stringName.length() + 1;
    len = MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, 0, stringName.c_str(), slength, 0, 0);
    wchar_t* buf = new wchar_t[len];
    MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, 0, stringName.c_str(), slength, buf, len);
    std::wstring r(buf);
    delete[] buf;
    return r;
}

Answer 1

You can use MultibyteToWideChar() function to perform the actual conversion (MSDN page). There is no need to add slashes - they are just escape sequences which represent a single '\' in your program code.