What is Linux equivalent of LPTSTR & LPCSTR?

c linux porting lpcstr lptstr
jparthj picture jparthj · Feb 5, 2014 · Viewed 7.4k times · Source

I am converting windows library to linux. I need to find LPTSTR and LPCSTR in linux.

I get to know that i can use wchar_t can be used but I am not really sure about using it.

one of the method that uses LPTSTR is as follows:

void ErrorExit(LPTSTR zFunction)
{
}

Any help will be appreciated!

Answer

rodrigo picture rodrigo · Feb 5, 2014

In Linux you don't usually use wchar_t for library API functions. Most libraries use UTF-8 encoded strings, so they take as strings plain arrays of NUL-terminated chars (IMO that is far better than duplicating all the functions with ANSI and Unicode versions).

So, with that in mind:

  • LPCTSTR, LPCSTR, LPCWSTR -> const char *.
  • LPTSTR, LPSTR, LPWSTR -> char *.

If you insist in using Unicode functions, MS style, you have to be aware that they actually use UTF-16 encoded strings, and wchar_t is not a portable type, as its size is not specified by the language. Instead you can use uint16_t:

  • LPCWSTR -> const uint16_t *.
  • LPWSTR -> uint16_t *.

And if you want to be extra MS compatible, you can use the UNICODE macro to conditionally typedef the LPTSTR and LPTCSTR into one of the others, but that's probably unneeded for your problem.

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