error C2440: 'return' : cannot convert from 'char *const ' to 'LPCTSTR'

Question

struct StaticString
{
 StaticString() { Str = NULL; }
 ~StaticString() { if(Str) delete [] Str; Str=0; }

 char* Str;

 void operator = (const char * pchar)
 {
  Str = new char[strlen(pchar)+1];
  strcpy(Str,pchar);
 }
 operator LPCTSTR() const
 {
  return Str;
 }
 operator PCHAR() const
 {
  return Str;
 }
 
};

Its from game . and how can i fix that? i search in google but no one work

Possible duplicate of [char to LPCTSTR](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2536628/char-to-lpctstr) — Alex Guteniev, Mar 10 '19 at 06:16
Do you have UNICODE defined? You would be doing yourself a favor if you avoided TCHAR, forever. — Retired Ninja, Mar 10 '19 at 06:16
Possible duplicate of [LPCSTR, LPCTSTR and LPTSTR](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/321413/lpcstr-lpctstr-and-lptstr) — Retired Ninja, Mar 10 '19 at 06:17

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 10 '19 at 06:20

LPCTSTR is "long pointer to constant TCHAR string".

The TCHAR type is ancient. It dates back to the original transition from "ANSI" to "wide-character" Unicode with Windows 98/NT.

#ifdef _UNICODE
typedef wchar_t TCHAR;
#else
typedef char TCHAR;
#endif

Most projects these days default to _UNICODE which means TCHAR is not a char but is instead wchar_t.

See What are TCHAR, WCHAR, LPSTR, LPWSTR, LPCTSTR (etc.)?

Generally you should avoid using these Windows portable types and stick with C++ standard types.

error C2440: 'return' : cannot convert from 'char *const ' to 'LPCTSTR'

1 Answers1