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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-11T19:25:32+00:00

As I understand it, Windows #defines TCHAR as the correct character type for your

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As I understand it, Windows #defines TCHAR as the correct character type for your application based on the build – so it is wchar_t in UNICODE builds and char otherwise.

Because of this I wondered if std::basic_string<TCHAR> would be preferable to std::wstring, since the first would theoretically match the character type of the application, whereas the second would always be wide.

So my question is essentially: Would std::basic_string<TCHAR> be preferable to std::wstring on Windows? And, would there be any caveats (i.e. unexpected behavior or side effects) to using std::basic_string<TCHAR>? Or, should I just use std::wstring on Windows and forget about it?

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  1. Editorial Team

    I believe the time when it was advisable to release non-unicode versions of your application (to support Win95, or to save a KB or two) is long past: nowadays the underlying Windows system you’ll support are going to be unicode-based (so using char-based system interfaces will actually complicate the code by interposing a shim layer from the library) and it’s doubtful whether you’d save any space at all. Go std::wstring, young man!-)

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