Helper classes for working with managed/unmanaged strings for cswin32?

[Jan Martin (catmanjan)]

For example Vanara has https://github.com/dahall/Vanara/blob/624318e1e7e294192581291a1e5f5ee3c3d146e2/Core/InteropServices/SafeCoTaskMemString.cs

I am having to marshal strings to pointers and back again quite a lot, just wondering if cswin32 provides anything - and if not, what are people using? Or everyone is just writing their own?

[Mitch Richters (mjr4077au)]

Using my own as per the below. This project isn't really meant to be a complete Vanara replacement, the API deliberately follows the Win32 API closely, with all warts and bumps included.

[Jan Martin (catmanjan)]

Thanks, here's mine - any criticisms?

using Microsoft.Win32.SafeHandles;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace Shared
{
    public sealed class SafeStringToCoTaskMemUni : SafeHandleZeroOrMinusOneIsInvalid
    {
        public SafeStringToCoTaskMemUni(string value) : base(true)
        {
            SetHandle(Marshal.StringToCoTaskMemUni(value));
        }

        public unsafe char* ToPointer() => (char*)handle;

        protected override bool ReleaseHandle()
        {
            Marshal.FreeCoTaskMem(handle);
            return true;
        }
    }
}

[Mitch Richters (mjr4077au)]

You probably don't need the ToPointer() method as SafeHandle has DangerousGetHandle() available to you, and its naming implies that the caller should think about what they're doing before leaking a raw handle value.