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Asked: 2026-05-11T11:59:37+00:00

I’m trying to create a (very) simple Win32 GUI program, but for some reason

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I’m trying to create a (very) simple Win32 GUI program, but for some reason the compiler (I’m using VC++ 2008 Express) wants me to manually typecast every string or char* to LPCWSTR:

I get this compiler error every time I do this, for example I get this error for the ‘Hello’ and ‘Note’:

error C2664: ‘MessageBoxW’ : cannot convert parameter 2 from ‘const char [22]’ to ‘LPCWSTR’

Please tell me I don’t have to cast every time I do this….

Here’s the code:

#include <windows.h>  int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,      LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) {     MessageBox(NULL, 'Hello', 'Note', MB_OK);     return 0; }
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1 Answer

  1. The default for new projects in VS2008 is to build UNICODE aware applications. You can either change that default and go back to using ANSI or MBCS apps (Properties->Configuration Properties->General->Character Set), or use Unicode Strings like this:

    int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,      LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) {     MessageBox(NULL, L'Hello', L'Note', MB_OK);     return 0; }

    Do not cast your strings to LPCWSTR because that will lead to undefined behavior! A char is not the same as a wchar_t!

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