Converting Strings
Several ways of converting between Managed System::String instances and C/C++ strings.

MC++ provides no direct way of converting between managed strings and unmanaged C/C++ strings and character arrays, so you have to do it yourself. The easiest way to do this is using the helper methods in the Marshal class found in the System::Runtime::InteropServices namespace.

To convert from a System::String* to a C-style char*, you can use one of the StringToHGlobalXXX methods, which allow you to convert to both ANSI and Unicode variants. There are also several other methods that allow you to convert to BSTRs, for example.

Here's an example of this:

using namespace System::Runtime::InteropServices;
const char* str = (const char*)
   (Marshal::StringToHGlobalAnsi(managedString)).ToPointer();
// use str as you wish or copy it elsewhere
// free string
Marshal::FreeHGlobal(IntPtr((void*)str));

To do the conversion the other way, use the PtrToStringXXX() methods instead.

Now, if you prefer to use the Standard C++ Library string classes instead, you can write simple wrapper methods to make the conversion easier. Here's an example of them:

void MarshalString ( System::String* s, std::string& os )
{
   using namespace System::Runtime::InteropServices;
   const char* chars = 
      (const char*)(Marshal::StringToHGlobalAnsi(s)).ToPointer();
   os = chars;
   Marshal::FreeHGlobal(IntPtr((void*)chars));
}
void MarshalString ( System::String* s, std::wstring& os )
{
   using namespace System::Runtime::InteropServices;
   const wchar_t* chars = 
      (const wchar_t*)(Marshal::StringToHGlobalUni(s)).ToPointer();
   os = chars;
   Marshal::FreeHGlobal(IntPtr((void*)chars));
}