Character conversion

[socomm]

All right this is my first post so be gentle. Here is my problem I am looking to convert a const char* to a char * and vice versa. All ideas, links, or flames are welcomed.

const char* x;
char* y;

y = x;

What is the proper way to convert a const char to a char?

[palin]

they way you have it at the moment y will just recieve the address of x, not sure if this is really what you want. if you don't the syntax for assignment with pointers is

*y = *x;

now the const keyword is defined to mean that the value will never be able to be changed by your program, you can intialize it but then it is really read only.

edit: though it should be possible to reassign the value that x points to.

[socomm]

Yes

const char* x;
char* y = *x;

invalid conversion from const char to char*
though

const char* x;
char* y;

*y = *x;

will compile just fine( with the exception that the program crashes upon launch).

[palin]

please post your whole program.

[palin]

have you tried
const char* x = "A";

I have gotten it to work properly this way. More on this if you are still stuck when I get home from work.

[joe_bruin]

what are you trying to accomplish? you have a pointer of type 'const char *' and you want a pointer of type 'char *' to point to the same thing? this is a bad idea. things are marked const for a reason (usually because they are read-only, or supposed to be), and therefore assigning it to a non const will mean trouble.

void foo()
{
  const char *x = "dude";
  char *y;

  y = (char *)x; // cast to type 'char *'
  cout << y << endl;
}

note that in this case, if you try to modify y (or x), you will crash your program.

  y = (char *)x; // cast to type 'char *'
  y[0] = 'r'; // segmentation fault, crash

[agh]

You could do this:

void f()
{
    char c = 'a';    
    const char* ccp = &c;
    char* cp = const_cast<char*>(ccp);
    *cp = 'b';
}

But, as joe_bruin said, you shouldn't do that, because things are marked const for a reason.

[socomm]

Thank you all, I am not changing the value of const char it is merely for display purposes. Thanks again I really appreciate all the help.

[socomm]

This is an old post but here is a solution I found,

char *fps = NULL;
int x;

stringstream ss;
ss<<x;
fps = (char *)ss.str( ).c_str( );

cout<<"FPS: "<<fps<<endl;

for future references .