Difference between char* and wchar_t*

Question

I am new to MFC. I am trying to do simple mfc application and I\'m getting confuse in some places. For example, SetWindowText have two api, SetWindowTextA

Answer 1

char is used for so called ANSI family of functions (typically function name ends with A), or more commonly known as using ASCII character set.

wchar_t is used for new so called Unicode (or Wide) family of functions (typically function name ends with W), which use UTF-16 character set. It is very similar to UCS-2, but not quite it. If character requires more than 2 bytes, it will be converted into 2 composite codepoints, and this can be very confusing.

If you want to convert one to another, it is not really simple task. You will need to use something like MultiByteToWideChar, which requires knowing and providing code page for input ANSI string.