How to create a static array of literals

Defining an array of text string is a basic task that most developer need to do. This is simple on most environment... but not so trivial in Symbian OS where you have to deal with descriptors and literals.

By default, you may want to try an easy

_LIT(KSomeText,"Hello");
_LIT(KMoreText,"World");

const TPtrC gStringArray[] =
{
  KSomeText,
  KMoreText,
  ...
};

Unfortunately, this will result in a friendly:

error: conversion from `const TLitC<x>' to non-scalar type `TPtrC16' requested

A literal not being a descriptor, you cannot create your array in this way. At least, not exactly in this way. The solution is however simple to implement - not always to find - as the () operator applied to a literal convert it into a descriptor. So just fix the code above and here you are:

_LIT(KSomeText,"Hello");
_LIT(KMoreText,"World");

const TPtrC gStringArray[] =
{
  KSomeText(),
  KMoreText(),
  ...
};