SBCS and MBCS Data Types
Any Microsoft MBCS run-time library routine that handles only one multibyte character or one byte of a multibyte character expects an unsignedint argument (where 0x00 <= character value <= 0xFFFF and 0x00 <= byte value <= 0xFF ). An MBCS routine that handles multibyte bytes or characters in a string context expects a multibyte-character string to be represented as an unsignedchar pointer.
Warning
Each byte of a multibyte character can be represented in an 8-bit char. However, an SBCS or MBCS single-byte character of type char with a value greater than 0x7F is negative. When such a character is converted directly to an int or a long, the result is sign-extended by the compiler and can therefore yield unexpected results.
Therefore it is best to represent a byte of a multibyte character as an 8-bit unsigned char. Or, to avoid a negative result, simply convert a single-byte character of type char to an unsigned char before converting it to an int or a long.
Because some SBCS string-handling functions take (signed) char* parameters, a type mismatch compiler warning will result when _MBCS is defined. There are three ways to avoid this warning, listed in order of efficiency:
Use the "type-safe" inline functions in TCHAR.H. This is the default behavior.
Use the "direct" macros in TCHAR.H by defining _MB_MAP_DIRECT on the command line. If you do this, you must manually match types. This is the fastest method but is not type-safe.
Use the "type-safe" statically linked library functions in TCHAR.H. To do so, define the constant _NO_INLINING on the command line. This is the slowest method, but the most type-safe.