Wide Characters and C
To a C programmer, the whole idea of 16-bit characters can certainly provoke uneasy chills. That a char is the same width as a byte is one of the very few certainties of this life. Few programmers are aware that ANSI/ISO 9899-1990, the “American National Standard for Programming Languages—C” (also known as “ANSI C”) supports character sets that require more than one byte per character through a concept called “wide characters.” These wide characters coexist nicely with normal and familiar characters.
ANSI C also supports multibyte character sets, such as those supported by the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean versions of Windows. However, these multibyte character sets are treated as strings of single-byte values in which some ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access