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Asked: 2026-05-25T15:08:13+00:00

What is the difference in calling the Win32 API function that have an A

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What is the difference in calling the Win32 API function that have an A character appended to the end as opposed to the W character.

I know it means ASCII and WIDE CHARACTER or Unicode, but what is the difference in the output or the input?

For example, If I call GetDefaultCommConfigA, will it fill my COMMCONFIG structure with ASCII strings instead of WCHAR strings? (Or vice-versa for GetDefaultCommConfigW)

In other words, how do I know what Encoding the string is in, ASCII or UNICODE, it must be by the version of the function I call A or W? Correct?

I have found this question, but I don’t think it answers my question.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The A functions use Ansi (not ASCII) strings as input and output, and the W functions use Unicode string instead (UCS-2 on NT4 and earlier, UTF-16 on W2K and later). Refer to MSDN for more details.

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