C++'s support for unicode is minimal. There are unicode string literals for UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32, and conversion facilities between those encodings and the

C++'s support for unicode is minimal. There are unicode string literals for UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32, and conversion facilities between those encodings and the host platforms native 'wide char' format. > - Do I use char* for strings? It sounds like wchar_t is 16 bits on some systems and 32 on others, so I should avoid it? In general you should use std::string and UTF-8, since UTF-8 is a relatively safe encoding for sub-string search and replace, and (locale insensitive) lexical comparison/ordering. Windows uses a 16 bit wchar_t (UTF-16). Mostly everyone else uses 32 bit (UTF-32) > - If I want to read & write UTF-8 files, how do I turn the bytes into 32-bit wide Unicode strings? http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/locale/wstring_convert http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/locale/wstring_convert > - Are there special functions I should use for handling Unicode strings? Nope. You need a library for that. Manipulating natural language is a tricky business anyway, beyond single mortals, and you will likely get it wrong.