WCHAR

WCHAR is a Windows data type that represents a 16‑bit Unicode character. It is used throughout the Windows API to handle text in the Unicode format.

Syntax

typedef wchar_t WCHAR;

Remarks

• Size: 2 bytes (16 bits) on all Windows platforms.
• Encoding: UTF‑16 code unit. Surrogate pairs may be required for characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane.
• Functions that accept WCHAR* generally expect a null‑terminated string (wide string).
• When interfacing with legacy APIs that expect char, you must convert between ANSI and Unicode using MultiByteToWideChar or WideCharToMultiByte.

Related Types

• CHAR – 8‑bit ANSI character.
• LPWSTR – Pointer to a WCHAR string.
• LPCWSTR – Constant pointer to a WCHAR string.

Example

Printing a WCHAR string using wprintf:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <windows.h>

int wmain(void)
{
    WCHAR greeting[] = L"Hello, 世界!";
    wprintf(L"%s\n", greeting);
    return 0;
}

See Also

• MultiByteToWideChar
• WideCharToMultiByte
• Unicode