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

SetWindowTextA takes char* which is a pointer to an ANSI strings and SetWindowTextW take wchar_t* can point to wide strings aka Unicode.

SetWindowText has been #defined to either of these in header Windows.h based on the type of application you are building. If you are building UNICODE build then your code will automatically use SetWindowTextW.

SetWindowTextA is there primarily to support legacy code which needs to be build as SBCS (Single byte character set)