Understanding the various character and string types

In the previous recipe, we looked at the variety of integral and floating-point types. Another category of types, character types, is often a source of misunderstanding and confusion. As of C++20, there are five character data types in the C++ language: char, wchar_t, char8_t, char16_t, and char32_t. In this recipe, we will look at how these types differ and how they are meant to be used.

How to do it…

Use the available character types as follows:

• The char type to store ASCII characters, Latin character sets (defined in the ISO-8859 standard), or even individual bytes of UTF-8 encoded characters:

  char c = 'C';
  const char* s = "C++";
  std::cout << c <<  s << '\n';
  

• The wchar_t type with the Windows API to store and manipulate UTF-16LE encoded characters:

  wchar_t c = L'Ʃ';
  const wchar_t* s = L"δῆ...