Available COM ports scan

Hi, I am fairly new in C/C++ programming.
I want to scan available com ports 1-99.

This ugly method works, anyone having a
better propose?

CreateFile(pcCommPort, etc...
does not accept that pcCommPort is a string.

I am using dev-cpp

Code:

char* pcCommPort;
char portnbr;

for (portnbr = 1; portnbr <=99; portnbr++) {
  // 1..7
   if (portnbr == 8) { pcCommPort = "\\\\.\\COM8"; }
   if (portnbr == 9) { pcCommPort = "\\\\.\\COM9"; }
   if (portnbr == 10) { pcCommPort = "\\\\.\\COM10"; }
   if (portnbr == 11) { pcCommPort = "\\\\.\\COM11"; }
  // 12..99

hComm = CreateFile(pcCommPort,
                      GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE,
                      0,    // comm devices must be opened w/exclusive-access
                      NULL, // no security attributes
                      OPEN_EXISTING, // comm devices must use OPEN_EXISTING
                      0,    // non overlapped I/O
                      NULL  // hTemplate must be NULL for comm devices
                      );

if you need to pass a C string to a function, then the C++ string has the c_str() function:

Code:

#include <string>
#include <iostream>
// ...
std::string s("hello, world");
std::cout << s.c_str();

Then you can use the C++ way to concatenate strings with other types..

Code:

#include <sstream>
#include <string>
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    int num(10);
    std::stringstream ss;
    ss << "Hello, World  " << num;
    std::string foo;
    std::getline(ss, foo);
    std::cout << foo.c_str();
}

look into strings and stringstreams to see how you can append the value in portnbr to the pcCommPort. Bascly what you want is to have pcCommPort contain "\\\\.\\COM" at first and then you just append the value in portnbr to that, and thats your final string

Hmm I try but still have the same problem.
I get compiler error:

cannot convert `std::string' to `const CHAR*' for argument `1' to `void* CreateFileA(const CHAR*, DWORD, DWORD, _SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES*, DWORD, DWORD, void*)'

Asking humble for help

need to use c_str() like this:
std::string yourString;
SomeFuncThatRequresCharPointer(yourString.c_str()) ;

Ok TY ALL!

Finally with some help I solved it
here is the solution

Code:

for (int i=1; i<99; i++) {
    stringstream ss;
    ss << "\\\\.\\COM" << i;
    

   hComm = CreateFile(ss.str().c_str(), .........etc