DoggettCK

Here's what I came up with in a few minutes. It should run in linear time and in-place. Not sure if it will work with TCHARs yet, so I'll give that a shot in a few minutes.

bool isAlphaNumeric(char c)
{
    if(iswalpha(c) || iswdigit(c)) return true;
    return false;    
}

bool isPalindrome(char *str)
{
    if(*str == '\0')
    {
        return false;    
    }
    int len = strlen(str);
    if(len <= 1) return true; // 0- or 1-length strings are simplest palindromes
    
    char *start = str;
    char *end = start + strlen(str) - 1;
    
    while(start < end)
    {
        // if start not a char, increment start and continue
        if(!isAlphaNumeric(*start))
        {
            *start++;
            continue;    
        }
        // if end not a char, decrement end and continue
        if(!isAlphaNumeric(*end))
        {
            *end--;
            continue;    
        }
        // if two characters are not equal, return false
        if(towlower(*start) != towlower(*end)) return false;
        // otherwise start++, end--
        *start++;
        *end--;        
    }
    return true;
}

Edit: Yup, substituting TCHAR for char works just fine. And just for the hell of it, here's strrev (or revstr, to avoid name conflicts)

void revstr(TCHAR *str)
{
    if(*str == '\0')
    {
        return;    
    }
    
    TCHAR *start = str;
    TCHAR *end = start + strlen(str) - 1;
    
    while(start < end)
    {
        *start ^= *end;
        *end ^= *start;
        *start ^= *end;
        *start++;
        *end--;
        // could also use *start ^= *end ^= *start++ ^= *end-- if you want to get fancy
    }    
}