The char-TCHAR-wchar_t Pendulum in Windows API Native C/C++ Programming
2 days ago
- #C++
- #Unicode
- #Win32 API
- Started learning Windows Win32 API programming in C/C++ on Windows 95 with Visual C++ 4, using char for strings.
- Transitioned to the TCHAR model for ANSI/Unicode compatibility, replacing char with TCHAR and using TEXT macro.
- Adopted Unicode (UTF-16) with wchar_t for international software, using L"..." for string literals and CreateWindowW API.
- Highlighted limitations of ANSI/MBCS (e.g., CP-1252) for non-Western languages and ambiguity in character representation.
- Noted Visual C++ 2005's default switch to Unicode (UTF-16) and recent Windows 10 support for UTF-8 in -A APIs.