How to convert wstring into string?

Question

The question is how to convert wstring to string?

I have next example :

#include <string>
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    std::wstring ws = L"Hello";
    std::string s( ws.begin(), ws.end() );

  //std::cout <<"std::string =     "<<s<<std::endl;
    std::wcout<<"std::wstring =    "<<ws<<std::endl;
    std::cout <<"std::string =     "<<s<<std::endl;
}

the output with commented out line is :

std::string =     Hello
std::wstring =    Hello
std::string =     Hello

but without is only :

std::wstring =    Hello

Is anything wrong in the example? Can I do the conversion like above?

EDIT

New example (taking into account some answers) is

#include <string>
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
#include <locale>

int main()
{
    setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "");

    const std::wstring ws = L"Hello";
    const std::string s( ws.begin(), ws.end() );

    std::cout<<"std::string =     "<<s<<std::endl;
    std::wcout<<"std::wstring =    "<<ws<<std::endl;

    std::stringstream ss;
    ss << ws.c_str();
    std::cout<<"std::stringstream =     "<<ss.str()<<std::endl;
}

The output is :

std::string =     Hello
std::wstring =    Hello
std::stringstream =     0x860283c

therefore the stringstream can not be used to convert wstring into string.

Answer 1

In case anyone else is interested: I needed a class that could used interchangeably wherever either a string or wstring was expected. The following class convertible_string, based on dk123's solution, can be initialized with either a string, char const*, wstring or wchar_t const* and can be assigned to by or implicitly converted to either a string or wstring (so can be passed into a functions that take either).

class convertible_string
{
public:
    // default ctor
    convertible_string()
    {}

    /* conversion ctors */
    convertible_string(std::string const& value) : value_(value)
    {}
    convertible_string(char const* val_array) : value_(val_array)
    {}
    convertible_string(std::wstring const& wvalue) : value_(ws2s(wvalue))
    {}
    convertible_string(wchar_t const* wval_array) : value_(ws2s(std::wstring(wval_array)))
    {}

    /* assignment operators */
    convertible_string& operator=(std::string const& value)
    {
        value_ = value;
        return *this;
    }
    convertible_string& operator=(std::wstring const& wvalue)
    {
        value_ = ws2s(wvalue);
        return *this;
    }

    /* implicit conversion operators */
    operator std::string() const { return value_; }
    operator std::wstring() const { return s2ws(value_); }
private:
    std::string value_;
};

Answer 2

#include <boost/locale.hpp>
namespace lcv = boost::locale::conv;

inline std::wstring fromUTF8(const std::string& s)
{ return lcv::utf_to_utf<wchar_t>(s); }

inline std::string toUTF8(const std::wstring& ws)
{ return lcv::utf_to_utf<char>(ws); }

Answer 3

As Cubbi pointed out in one of the comments, std::wstring_convert (C++11) provides a neat simple solution (you need to #include <locale> and <codecvt>):

wstring string_to_convert;

//setup converter
using convert_type = std::codecvt_utf8<wchar_t>;
std::wstring_convert<convert_type, wchar_t> converter;

//use converter (.to_bytes: wstr->str, .from_bytes: str->wstr)
std::string converted_str = converter.to_bytes( string_to_convert );

I was using a combination of wcstombs and tedious allocation/deallocation of memory before I came across this.

http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/locale/wstring_convert

update(2013.11.28)

One liners can be stated as so (Thank you Guss for your comment):

std::wstring str = std::wstring_convert<std::codecvt_utf8<wchar_t>>().from_bytes("some string");

Wrapper functions can be stated as so: (Thank you ArmanSchwarz for your comment)

wstring s2ws(const std::string& str)
{
    using convert_typeX = std::codecvt_utf8<wchar_t>;
    std::wstring_convert<convert_typeX, wchar_t> converterX;

    return converterX.from_bytes(str);
}

string ws2s(const std::wstring& wstr)
{
    using convert_typeX = std::codecvt_utf8<wchar_t>;
    std::wstring_convert<convert_typeX, wchar_t> converterX;

    return converterX.to_bytes(wstr);
}

Note: there's some controversy on whether string/wstring should be passed in to functions as references or as literals (due to C++11 and compiler updates). I'll leave the decision to the person implementing, but it's worth knowing.

Note: I'm using std::codecvt_utf8 in the above code, but if you're not using UTF-8 you'll need to change that to the appropriate encoding you're using:

http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/header/codecvt