wchar_t or char to string[], or alternative

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#1,634 opened on Sep 29, 2021 5 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty: 5/5
Estimated time: Over a week
Newbie friendliness: 25/100

Issue type: Feature
Clarity: Needs clarification
Activity status: Stale
Tech stack: c, csharp
Domain: tooling

Research direction

Start with the C header and compare the generated C# extern definition and wrapper against the intended string[] call. Trace how CppSharp handles wchar_t** and char** parameters, then define a supported generated representation and verify that the example can pass multiple strings; the issue names no source files or tests.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Hi all,

Please refer to detail below. I would like to know how can I generate a C# string[] parameter for a wchar_t** parameter in the C header.

Alternatively, how can I call/pass a string[] array to the char** parameter in the generated C# code.

Header

uint add_many_items(const wchar_t* name, const wchar_t** items);

Generated code

Extern definition

[SuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurity, DllImport("lib-test.so", EntryPoint = "add_many_items", CallingConvention = __CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
internal static extern uint AddManyItems([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.CustomMarshaler, MarshalTypeRef = typeof(CppSharp.Runtime.UTF32Marshaller))] string name, char** items);

Method

public static uint AddManyItems(string name, char** items)
{
    var __ret = __Internal.AddManyItems(name, items);
    return __ret;
}

Intended usage

string[] items = { "item-1", "item-2" };
AddManyItems("list-a", items);

Used settings

var options = driver.Options;
options.GeneratorKind = GeneratorKind.CSharp;
options.GenerationOutputMode = GenerationOutputMode.FilePerUnit;

var parserOptions = driver.ParserOptions;
parserOptions.TargetTriple = "aarch64-linux-gnu"; // Target linux generation (which uses UTTF32 for strings)
parserOptions.MicrosoftMode = false;
parserOptions.Verbose = true;
parserOptions.LanguageVersion = CppSharp.Parser.LanguageVersion.CPP17;
parserOptions.AddIncludeDirs(@"..\..\..\..\..\deepstream-services-library\src");

Dominant language: C#
Stars: 3.4k
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wchar_t** or char** to string[], or alternative