Unicode strings in Orwell Dev-C++ - c++

Question

In Dev-C++ when I compile my program with
LPCTSTR ClsName = L"BasicApp";
LPCTSTR WndName = L"A Simple Window";
the compilation breaks, but when I compile my program with
LPCTSTR ClsName = "BasicApp";
LPCTSTR WndName = "A Simple Window";
it succeeds; thus the question how to pass unicode-strings to Orwell Dev-C++ in a manner of the 'L' from VS++.

Answer 1

See Microsoft's documentation about Working with Strings
Very near the start of this you can read:
To declare a wide-character literal or a wide-character string literal, put L before the literal.
wchar_t a = L'a';
wchar_t *str = L"hello";
(This information is not Microsoft-specific. It echoes the C/C++ standards)
Then if you consult the documentation that you have cited in your comment
and find the entry for LPCTSTR you see that this macro is defined conditionally upon the value of UNICODE:
#ifdef UNICODE
typedef LPCWSTR LPCTSTR;
#else
typedef LPCSTR LPCTSTR;
#endif
The entry for LPCWSTR tells you it is defined:
typedef CONST WCHAR *LPCWSTR;
And the entry or LPCSTR tells you it is defined:
typedef __nullterminated CONST CHAR *LPCSTR;
You are building your project without UNICODE defined. Accordingly,
LPCTSTR ClsName = L"BasicApp";
becomes:
__nullterminated CONST CHAR * ClsName = L"BasicApp";
which, by the definitions mentioned, involves initializing a CONST CHAR * with an incompatible pointer type, wchar_t *. Likewise for WndName.
To rectify this error, you must add UNICODE to the preprocessor definitions of your project. In the Orwell Dev-C++ IDE, do this by navigating Project -> Project Options -> Parameters; enter -DUNICODE in the text box headed C++ compiler and OK out. A Visual Studio C/C++ project defines UNICODE by default. Orwell Dev-C++ does not.
If you want to write definitions of string literals that are portable between unicode and the ANSI multibyte character set, then Working with Strings tells you how: read the entry for TCHARS. The portable definitions of your string literals will be:
LPCTSTR ClsName = TEXT("BasicApp");
LPCTSTR WndName = TEXT("A Simple Window");