string? wstring?
std::string is a basic_string templated on a char, and std::wstring on a wchar_t.
char vs. wchar_t
char is supposed to hold a character, usually a 1-byte character. wchar_t is supposed to hold a wide character, and then, things get tricky: On Linux, a wchar_t is 4-bytes, while on Windows, it's 2-bytes
what about Unicode, then?
The problem is that neither char nor wchar_t is directly tied to unicode.
On Linux?
Let's take a Linux OS: My Ubuntu system is already unicode aware. When I work with a char string, it is natively encoded in UTF-8 (i.e. Unicode string of chars). The following code:
#include <cstring>
#include <iostream>
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
const char text[] = "olé" ;
std::cout << "sizeof(char) : " << sizeof(char) << std::endl ;
std::cout << "text : " << text << std::endl ;
std::cout << "sizeof(text) : " << sizeof(text) << std::endl ;
std::cout << "strlen(text) : " << strlen(text) << std::endl ;
std::cout << "text(bytes) :" ;
for(size_t i = 0, iMax = strlen(text); i < iMax; ++i)
{
std::cout << " " << static_cast<unsigned int>(
static_cast<unsigned char>(text[i])
);
}
std::cout << std::endl << std::endl ;
// - - -
const wchar_t wtext[] = L"olé" ;
std::cout << "sizeof(wchar_t) : " << sizeof(wchar_t) << std::endl ;
//std::cout << "wtext : " << wtext << std::endl ; <- error
std::cout << "wtext : UNABLE TO CONVERT NATIVELY." << std::endl ;
std::wcout << L"wtext : " << wtext << std::