Home | Unicode Tasks | Multibyte Character Set (MBCS) Tasks
Depending on your target operating system(s) and markets, you have several internationalization strategies:
You use Unicode-specific programming techniques and all characters are 16 bits wide (although you can use ANSI characters in some parts of your program for special purposes). The C run-time library provides functions, macros, and data types for Unicode-only programming. MFC is fully Unicode-enabled.
You use MBCS-specific programming techniques. Strings can contain single-byte characters, double-byte characters, or both. The C run-time library provides functions, macros, and data types for MBCS-only programming. MFC is fully MBCS-enabled.
You use fully portable C run-time functions, macros, and data types. MFC’s flexibility supports any of these strategies.
The remainder of this family of articles focuses on writing completely portable code that you can build as Unicode or as MBCS.
See Also Locales and Code Pages