Temporary std::strings returning junk

Question

I\'m still learning c++, so please bear with me. I\'m writing a simple wrapper around boost filesystem paths -- I\'m having strange issues with returning temporary strings.

Answer 1

Looks like mPath.string() returns a string by value. That temporary string object is destructed as soon as FileReference::c_str() returns, so its c_str() becomes invalid. With such a model, it's not possible to create a c_str() function without introducing some kind of class- or static-level variable for the string.

Consider the following alternatives:

//Returns a string by value (not a pointer!)
//Don't call it c_str() - that'd be misleading
String str() const
{             
     return mPath.string();
} 

or

void str(String &s) const
{             
     s = mPath.string();
}