What does LPCWSTR stand for and how should it be handled with?

Question

First of all, what is it exactly? I guess it is a pointer (LPC means long pointer constant), but what does \"W\" mean? Is it a specific pointer to a string or a pointer to a

Answer 1

It's a long pointer to a constant, wide string (i.e. a string of wide characters).

Since it's a wide string, you want to make your constant look like: L"TestWindow". I wouldn't create the intermediate a either, I'd just pass L"TestWindow" for the parameter:

ghTest = FindWindowEx(NULL, NULL, NULL, L"TestWindow");

If you want to be pedantically correct, an "LPCTSTR" is a "text" string -- a wide string in a Unicode build and a narrow string in an ANSI build, so you should use the appropriate macro:

ghTest = FindWindow(NULL, NULL, NULL, _T("TestWindow"));

Few people care about producing code that can compile for both Unicode and ANSI character sets though, and if you don't getting it to really work correctly can be quite a bit of extra work for little gain. In this particular case, there's not much extra work, but if you're manipulating strings, there's a whole set of string manipulation macros that resolve to the correct functions.