Hi, This is my first post so please be nice. I searched in this forum and googled but I still can not find the answer. This problem has bothered me for more than a day, so please give me some help. Thank you. I need to pass a vector of string to a library function foo(char const *const *const). I can not pass the &Vec[0] since it's a pointer to a string. Therefore, I have an array and pass the c_str() to that array. The following is my code (aNames is the vector of string): const char* aR[aNames.size()]; std::transform(aNames.begin(), aNames.end(), aR, boost::bind(&std::string::c_str, _1)); foo(aR); However, it seems it causes some undefined behavior: If I run the above code, then the function foo throw some warnings about illegal characters ('èI' blablabla) in aR. If I print aR before function foo like this: std::copy(aR, aR+rowNames.size(), std::ostream_iterator<const char*>(std::cout, "\n")); foo(aR); Then, everything is fine. My questions are: Does the conversion causes undefined behavior? If so, why? What is the correct way to pass vector of string to foo(char const *const *const)? Thank you very much for your help!