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Asked: 2026-05-11T16:28:52+00:00

I am developing a multi-platform application and in one component I have a class

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I am developing a multi-platform application and in one component I have a class method called DrawText. Unfortunately, I get a linker error (on windows only) saying that there is an unresolved external symbol for a DrawTextW method of this class.

I’ve seen this before with other methods ending in “Text” where it is looking for either a FooTextW or FooTextA method instead of the FooText method I defined. My assumption is that somewhere in the Windows headers there is a macro definition assigning FooText to FooTextW or FooTextA based on some other definition.

Aside from renaming my function (which is what I did in the past), does anybody have any good ideas for getting around this issue?

Thanks.

Joe

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Yes, this is a real problem with using Windows, and there’s no way to turn it off since the headers all look like this:

    #ifdef UNICODE
#define GetDlgItemText GetDlgItemTextW
#else
#define GetDlgItemText GetDlgItemTextA
#endif

    So you’re going to get the symbol defined either way. It would be very nice if you could #define something before #include’ing windows.h that turns this behavior off, but alas none exists.

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