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Sorry about the really bad title, but this is difficult to explain and hopefully someone can clear this up for me.

I am using a tool called dllexp(1) to view the functions in some common .dll files(kernel32, user32, etc)

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Why are there versions with 'A' and versions with 'W'. What is the difference here?

Thanks

  1. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/dll_export_viewer.html
user2864740
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William
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    "ANSI", "WIDE" - ref. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4592261/windows-api-ansi-and-wide-character-strings-is-it-utf8-or-ascii-utf-16-or-u (also note the signature change: LPCSTR for A, LPWSTR/LPCWSTR for W.) – user2864740 Apr 11 '14 at 23:24
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    These are functions that take string arguments. 30+ years ago everybody wrote strings in English. 20 years ago Microsoft noted that not everybody speaks English on this planet. And decided to support Unicode. W = wide = unicode, A = ansi = 8-bit characters. Two functions to get the same job done, makes everybody happy. – Hans Passant Apr 11 '14 at 23:27
  • For some definitions of "unicode" anyway :) – M.M Apr 11 '14 at 23:49

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