Why was wchar_t invented?

Question

Why is wchar_t needed? How is it superior to short (or __int16 or whatever)?

(If it matters: I live in Windows world. I don\'t

Answer 1

wchar_t is the primitive for storing and processing the platform's unicode characters. Its size is not always 16 bit. On unix systems wchar_t is 32 bit (maybe unix users are more likely to use the klingon charaters that the extra bits are used for :-).

This can pose problems for porting projects especially if you interchange wchar_t and short, or if you interchange wchar_t and xerces' XMLCh.

Therefore having wchar_t as a different type to short is very important for writing cross-platform code. Cleaning up this was one of the hardest parts of porting our application to unix and then from VC6 to VC2005.