C++ project type: unicode vs multi-byte; pros and cons

Question

I\'m wondering what the Stack Overflow community thinks when it comes to creating a project (thinking primarily c++ here) with a unicode or a multi-byte character set.

Answer 1

You are talking about the VC++ Project setting here, right?

The only thing it affects is the version of Win32 API calls it ends up being exectuted. For instance, a call to MessageBox will end up as a call to MessageBoxA in case of the multi-byte setting, and MessageBoxW in case of Unicode setting. Of course, that will affect the types of string parameters to that functions as well. Internally, MessageBoxA calls MessageBoxW after converting the string paramteres from the current system locale to Unicode.

My advice is to use the Unicode settings and pass Unicode strings to Win32 API calls. That does not stop you from using strings in any other encoding internally.