Environment: VC6 SP3, NT4 SP4
One of the reasons I left C and began to use C++ was CString and even more so CStringArray. These two classes are worth
all the other aggravation when going OO. I don’t claim that they are perfect. There are things missing in both of
those classes and I would like to share this extension of CStringArray that I have made.
Finding an string in a CStringArray
One of the things that I think are missing in CStringArray is a Find method. I find myself wanting to get a specific string out of the array
and I know part, or the whole, of it. Not the position in the array. So I added this method. It is very straight forward and uses
CString::Find to find the string.
Example:
meStringArray arr;
// fill the array with strings using the normal Add()
arr.Add("This is a String");
arr.Add("The second string");
arr.Add("the 3:rd string");
// find the third string
int i=arr.Find("3:rd");
// i is now 2
CString sBuf;
sBuf=arr.GetAt(i);
// sBuf has now the value of "the 3:rd string"
Array of NULL terminating strings
Some SDK-functions and some classes still using an array of NULL terminating strings. e.g. CFileDialog uses this kind of array
for the filters. GetProfileString(“section”,NULL,””,buf,sizeof(buf)); also uses it, and there are many more. So every time you need to use
this class/function you have to go back to C and do a lot of loops. Well I finally got tired of it and extended CStringArray with two methods;
AddBuf() and GetBuf(). The first will take an array of NULL terminating strings and add it to the StringArray, and the second will do the reverse
Example GetBuf:
CFileDialog dlg;
meStringArray filter;
// init filter
filter.Add("All files");
filter.Add("*.*");
filter.Add("Doc files");
filter.Add("*.doc");
filter.Add("Text files");
filter.Add("*.txt");
// Init file dialog
dlg.m_ofn.lpstrFilter=filter.GetBuf();
dlg.m_ofn.lpstrInitialDir=initDir;
dlg.m_ofn.Flags |= OFN_SHAREAWARE;
int rc=dlg.DoModal();
if(rc==IDOK)
{
m_filepath=dlg.GetPathName();
UpdateData(FALSE);
}
Example AddBuf:
meStringArray arr;
char buf[1024];
// Get all printer names
GetProfileString("devices",NULL,"",buf,sizeof(buf));
// add them to the array
arr.AddBuf(buf);
// Get the second printer name from the array
CString sPrintName = arr.GetAt(2);
Well that’s it! It’s not a very large class so there is not so much to say.
I hope that someone will find use for this and PLEASE let me know what you think!
This is the first class I ever published so please say what you think about it, good, bad.