Weird characters in a std::vector<TCHAR*> - c++

Question

Trying to get all sub directories, and eventually all files in sub directories, and I'm passing a std::vector as a reference to a function that actually gets all of the directories. I can cout the cFileName inside the function but once it returns the main the vector has weird characters.
Currently have my Character Set to use Unicode. When I was using multibyte it would actually print weird characters, now it prints nothing. The vector does have something in it (directories.size() returns a value > 0)
Can't really think of anything else. Hopefully this was a good question lol. Thanks
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <Windows.h>
#include <tchar.h>
#include <stdio.h>
// Declare function prototypes
DWORD listDirectories(std::vector<TCHAR*>&);
// Global variable that holds the current working path of the program
TCHAR buffer[MAX_PATH];
void main()
{
// Declare variables, dwCount for return value from listDirectories, directories stores all sub directories, cDirectory stores current directory
DWORD dwCount;
//std::vector<TCHAR*> directories;
std::vector<TCHAR*> directories;
TCHAR cDirectory[MAX_PATH];
// Get current directory
GetCurrentDirectory(MAX_PATH, buffer);
// Set cDirectory (current directory) to buffer (ATM is current directory) + add \\ to the end and make it the working directory
_tcscpy_s(cDirectory, buffer);
_tcscat_s(cDirectory, L"\\*");
// dwCount is count of how many directories found, to be used later
dwCount = listDirectories(directories);
// Range for loop to print each value in the std::vector<TCHAR*> directories
for (auto tStr : directories) {
// Doing wcout here prints weird characters.
std::wcout << tStr << std::endl;
}
std::cin.get();
} // end void main()
DWORD listDirectories(std::vector<TCHAR*> &directories)
{
// Declare variables, count used for number of directories, hFind for FindFirstFile, data used to store file data
DWORD count = 0;
HANDLE hFind = INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE;
WIN32_FIND_DATA data;
TCHAR currentDir[MAX_PATH];
// Copy the current working directory into currentDir, will be used for subDir
_tcscpy_s(currentDir, buffer);
// Append "\\*" to buffer to make it a working directory
_tcscat_s(buffer, L"\\*");
// Find first file in the current working directory, storying data in data as a reference
hFind = FindFirstFile(buffer, &data);
// If hFind is not an invalid handle
if (hFind != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) {
// Go through each file in the directory
do
{
// If the file attributes is a directory
if (data.dwFileAttributes & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY)
{
// Create a sub directory
TCHAR subDir[MAX_PATH];
// Fill subDir with current directory + "\\" + dir name
_tcscpy_s(subDir, currentDir);
_tcscat_s(subDir, L"\\");
_tcscat_s(subDir, data.cFileName);
// Fill subDir with current directory + "\\" + dir name
//sprintf_s(subDir, "%s%s%s", currentDir, "\\", data.cFileName);
// Add directory to my directories (std::vector<TCHAR*>) if count > 1, because I don't want the "." and ".." directories
if (count > 1){
directories.push_back(subDir);
// Doing wcout here prints the subDir just fine and works properly
std::wcout << subDir << std::endl;
}
// Add 1 to count, used as the return for how many directories found in the current directory
count++;
}
} while (FindNextFile(hFind, &data) != 0);
}
// Return count of directories found. -2 to get rid of the "." and ".." directories
return (count - 2);
} // end DWORD listDirectories(std::vector<TCHAR*>&)

Answer 1

In your listDirectories() function
TCHAR subDir[MAX_PATH];
...
directories.push_back(subDir);
subDir is an array local to the do ... while loop within the function and its lifetime ends with every iteration of the loop.
Change std::vector<TCHAR*> directories; to std::vector<std::basic_string<TCHAR>> directories; and your code should work correctly. Now you'll make a copy of the directory name and add that to the vector.
Another alternative is to forget about all the TCHAR stuff and just use the wide character versions of everything when dealing with the Windows API.
std::vector<std::wstring> directories;
wchar_t cDirectory[MAX_PATH];
...
hFind = FindFirstFileW(buffer, &data);
and so forth