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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T12:24:14+00:00

For example: // This will become either SomeMethodA or SomeMethodW, // depending on whether

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For example:

// This will become either SomeMethodA or SomeMethodW,
// depending on whether _UNICODE is defined.
SomeMethod( _T( "My String Literal" ) );

// Becomes either AnotherMethodA or AnotherMethodW.
AnotherMethod( _TEXT( "My Text" ) );

I’ve seen both. _T seems to be for brevity and _TEXT for clarity. Is this merely a subjective programmer preference or is it more technical than that? For instance, if I use one over the other, will my code not compile against a particular system or some older version of a header file?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    A simple grep of the SDK shows us that the answer is that it doesn’t matter—they are the same. They both turn into __T(x).

    C:\...\Visual Studio 8\VC>findstr /spin /c:"#define _T(" *.h 
crt\src\tchar.h:2439:#define _T(x)       __T(x) 
include\tchar.h:2390:#define _T(x)       __T(x)

C:\...\Visual Studio 8\VC>findstr /spin /c:"#define _TEXT(" *.h 
crt\src\tchar.h:2440:#define _TEXT(x)    __T(x) 
include\tchar.h:2391:#define _TEXT(x)    __T(x)

    And for completeness: 

    C:\...\Visual Studio 8\VC>findstr /spin /c:"#define __T(" *.h 
crt\src\tchar.h:210:#define __T(x)     L ## x 
crt\src\tchar.h:889:#define __T(x)      x 
include\tchar.h:210:#define __T(x)     L ## x 
include\tchar.h:858:#define __T(x)      x

    However, technically, for C++ you should be using TEXT() instead of _TEXT(), but it (eventually) expands to the same thing too.

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