Windows and MFC specifically, ANSI is MBCS. I've always considered SBCS to
Yes "ANSI" is a bad name choice, but the meaning is the same as MBCS.
Almost.
ANSI can be SBCS or MBCS. But it is one of them.
The system has one ANSI code page and only one at a certain time
(the system code page), and changing it requires a reboot.
932 (Shift-JIS), 950 (Big5), etc, are all MBCS.
Any one of them can be the ANSI code page in a certain session.
But not all of them.
Then you have other code pages, like EUC-JP or GBK, that are DBCS,
but cannot be ANSI (they can never be used as system locale).
But this is just lingo.
For a programmer using Dev Studio the lingo means something else.
If you go in Dev Studio you only have 3 options for Character set
1. Not set (nothing defined)
2. Multi-Byte Character Set (_MBCS defined)
3. Unicode Character Set (_UNICODE and UNICODE defined)
In most cases there is no difference between 1. and 2.
If you use MessageBox for 1. and 2. will become MessageBoxA,
and for 3. it will become MessageBoxW.
But look at things like _tcsclen.
In case 1. will become strlen, in case 2. it becomes _mbslen,
and in case 3. it becomes wcslen.
This is why sometimes you have to be very carefull what you use
when you convert to generic text handling. Will you replace strlen
with _tcslen, or with _tcsclen?
(in most cases the answer is _tcslen, but there are exceptions)
--
Mihai Nita [Microsoft MVP, Windows - SDK]
http://www.mihai-nita.net
------------------------------------------
Replace _year_ with _ to get the real email