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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T06:37:50+00:00

The Windows _setmbcp function allows any valid code page… (except UTF-7 and UTF-8, which

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The Windows _setmbcp function allows any valid code page…

(except UTF-7 and UTF-8, which are not supported)

OK, not supporting UTF-7 makes sense: Characters have non-unique representations and that introduces complexity and security risks.

But why not UTF-8?

As I understand it, the "ANSI" versions of the Windows API functions convert their arguments to UTF-16, call the equivalent "W" function, and convert any strings in the output to "ANSI". This is what I’ve been doing manually. So why can’t Windows do it for me?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The “ANSI” codepage is basically legacy: Windows 9X era. All modern software should be Unicode (that is, UTF-16) based anyway.

    Basically, when the Ansi code page stuff was originally designed, UTF-8 wasn’t even invented and so support for multi-byte encodings was rather haphazard (i.e. most Ansi code pages are single byte, with the exception of some East Asian code pages which are one-or-two byte). Adding support for “proper” multi-byte encodings was probably deemed not worth the effort when all new development should be done in UTF-16 anyway.

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