Folks, I have to make a quick demo of how a VS C++ coder can return a Unicode string from a function back to a C# caller. Easy I thought... I haven't written serious C++ since 2004 and things have changed for the worse. The introduction of 'W' wide character support has blown everything to the merdehouse. I don't even know which "string" to use, but I guess that std:string (or std:wstring actually) is the preferred modern choice. Then there are all the type aliases (wchar_t, LPCWSTR, etc). Then I find many library functions (like localtime) are deprecated and cause compile errors. The whole C++ language and ecosystem is now bigger than a cyclotron. Anyway, I've pasted the code snippets here:
[image: image.png] [image: image.png] Unfortunately all I get back is a garbage string full of \uDDDD characters. I've tried dozens of combinations of changes everywhere, even putting everything back to plain ASCII, but nothing will give me a good string back from the function. Does anyone know for sure how to get a Unicode string back from C++? Web searches produce hundreds of contradictory suggestions, all of which don't compile, don't work or crash. Thanks *Greg Keogh*
