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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T20:03:00+00:00

I’m getting a value from the registry. This value might have double byte characters

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I’m getting a value from the registry. This value might have double byte characters in it.
I will later have to transfer this across the network to a C# client to display. C# is all unicode.
The function returns MBCS if you call it non-unicode.

What should I use?

string result = string(cbData);
RegQueryValueExA(h_sub_key, "DisplayName", NULL, NULL, (LPBYTE) &result[0], &cbData)

or

string result = string(cbData);
RegQueryValueExW(h_sub_key, L"DisplayName", NULL, NULL, (LPBYTE) &result[0], &cbData)
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Using Unicode whenever possible will make your life easier. The registry contains Unicode natively and converts to MBCS on the fly when you use ReqQueryValueExA, why would you want to do an unneeded conversion?

    Converting to UTF-8 from UTF-16 might make sense for information going over the network, but if you control both ends of the connection it wouldn’t be necessary.

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