assigning unsigned char* to string C++

Question

This is my sample code. Please let me know why it crashes over here.

string MyFunction::GetString(unsigned char* inStrReference)
{
    unsigned char* bufPtr = inStrReference; 

    string newstring = (char*)bufPtr;

    return newstring;
}

Answer 1

First of all the code is identical to the much less verbose:

string MyFunction::GetString(unsigned char* inStrReference) {
   return inStrReference;
}

In fact, as it is the whole function is completely unnecessary. If var = GetString(s); is valid then var = s; is guaranteed to be valid as well and to produce the same identical result.

As for the crash, it's probably because inStrReference doesn't point to a valid memory area that contains a zero terminated string. In other words, we need more details on how this function is called to tell you what the problem is.