Thread: LPCSTR to LPCWSTR

I'm trying to perform the type conversion as shown in the subject title. Below shows the working copy of my code relevant to this conversion so far:

Code:

	LPCSTR lpszOutput = "c:\\PDFTron_before.pdf";

	SHELLEXECUTEINFOW File;

	File.cbSize = sizeof(SHELLEXECUTEINFOW);
	File.hwnd = NULL;
	File.lpVerb = L"open";
	File.lpFile = lpszOutput;

If I try using the green highlighted code, I'm getting the following error message:

Code:

1>c:\pdftron_vprint\shellscript\shellscript.cpp(20) : error C2440: '=' : cannot convert from 'LPCSTR' to 'LPCWSTR'
1>        Types pointed to are unrelated; conversion requires reinterpret_cast, C-style cast or function-style cast

If I try replacing the highlighted code with:

Code:

int byteWritten = MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP,
								MB_PRECOMPOSED,
								lpszOutput,
								-1,
								(LPWSTR) File.lpFile,
								0);

I'm getting a runtime error saying that File was used without being initialized. Does it imply that I should be allocating memory to File.lpFile?