macros are evil ! i want to set an item text in a listview control representing a date ListView_SetItemText(hWnd, iIndex, 1, log.GetTimeString().GetBuffer(0)); the log object is like this: class CLog : public CObject { ... CString GetDateString() { return m_datetime.Format(_T("%d/%m/%Y")); } CString GetTimeString() { return m_datetime.Format(_T("%H:%M:%S")); } ... } ListView_SetItemText(hWnd, iIndex, 1, log.GetTimeString().GetBuffer(0)); is bad because the CString object returned by the GetTimeString is temporary (and valid only in that line) but the ListView_SetItemtext is a macro ! looking inside it, it looks like this: #define ListView_SetItemText(hwndLV, i, iSubItem_, pszText_) { LV_ITEM _ms_lvi;_ms_lvi.iSubItem = iSubItem_;_ms_lvi.pszText = pszText_;SNDMSG((hwndLV), LVM_SETITEMTEXT, (WPARAM)(i), (LPARAM)(LV_ITEM *)&_ms_lvi);} so once the buffer is set to _ms_lvi.pszText the CString object is destroyed and the SNDMSG will send an invalid buffer

never leave a structure with unfilled values, for example: BROWSEINFO bi; SHBrowseForFolder(&bi); in order to avoid this, a good practice would be one of these: - remember to always initialize members we don't need: bi.hwndOwner = NULL; - just initialize the variabile: BROWSEINFO bi = { 0 }; - use memset on the structure: memset(bi, 0, sizeof(BRWOSEINFO));