GetProcAddress of string

I created a small DLL and I want it to have an identifier of sorts, so I tried placing this in the DLL:

Code:

#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C" {
#endif
  __declspec(dllexport) const char* NAME = "SomeName";
#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif

And then used GetProcAddress to get the address of this variable:

Code:

//...after loading the DLL
name = (char*)GetProcAddress(hDll,"NAME");

GetProcAddress doesnt fail; however, name just contains garbage.

Defining functions in the DLL works fine, ie:

Code:

extern "C" __declspec(dllexport) void SomeFunc() { /*...*/ }

Any suggestions

Well. Maybe it has something to do with it being a string literal. Maybe try:

Code:

char NAME[] = {'H','e','l','l','o','\0'};

Other than that I couldn't think of anything. Of course I have not even touched a dll

I don't think you can do this with variables, only with procedures, I may be wrong though, but I thought that's why it was GetProcAddress.

Well...

Code:

__declspec(dllexport) char NAME[] = "Something" ; //works
__declspec(dllexport) const char NAME[] = "Something"; //error C2201: 'NAME' : must have external linkage in order to be exported/imported
__declspec(dllexport) const char* NAME = "Something"; //no compile errors, gives garbage at runtime

Somehow I never knew there was a difference. Guess I'll pay more attention now...

The easy option it to return the string from an exported function.

Originally Posted by JaWiB

Code:

__declspec(dllexport) char NAME[] = "Something" ; //works
__declspec(dllexport) const char NAME[] = "Something"; //error C2201: 'NAME' : must have external linkage in order to be exported/imported
__declspec(dllexport) const char* NAME = "Something"; //no compile errors, gives garbage at runtime

I'm guessing that GetProcAddress is returning &NAME. This will work for an array as &array returns the same value as array (at least on Windows). You could test this out by dereferencing:

Code:

__declspec(dllexport) const char* NAME = "SomeName";

//...after loading the DLL
name = *( (char**) GetProcAddress(hDll,"NAME") );

I agree with Fordy that returning the value from an exported function is a better option.