Notes on Internationalization for the Alarm Management API

  • Work with strings.
  • Recommended reading.

Work with strings

This API is written for the international environment. In an international environment, strings in CIMPLICITY software can be multi-byte strings. If you want your code to conform to international standards, it is recommended that you do the following when working with strings:

  • Use the TCHAR macros found in TCHAR.H .
  • Declare string buffers as TCHAR[] . Declare string pointers as TCHAR* or LPTSTR .
  • Wrap string and character constants with the _T() macro.
  • Use the _tcs...() functions in place of the str...() functions. For example, use _tcslen() in place of strlen() .
  • Be careful when incrementing a pointer through a string. Remember that a logical character may occupy one or two TCHAR units. So replace code that looks like this:

char *cp;

for (cp = string; *cp != '\0'; ++cp)

{

}

with code that looks like this:

TCHAR const *cp;

for (cp = string; *cp != _T('\0'); cp = _tcsinc(cp))

{

}

  • Avoid using a variable to hold the value of a logical character. Instead, use a pointer to a character in the string. In particular, avoid the _tcsnextc() macro, because the value it returns appears to be incompatible with some of the C runtime library functions.
  • Use the functions _tccpy() and _tccmp() and string pointers instead of the = and == operators on characters.
  • Use GetStringTypeEx() instead of the character classification macros such as _istalpha() .
  • Use CharUpper() and CharLower() instead of _toupper() and _tolower().

Recommended Reading

Microsoft has several good papers on writing international code on its Developer Network DVD and its web site To find documentation on the web site, go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/default.asp and search for MBCS

For documentation on globalization, go to http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/

The following book is also available:

  • Schmitt, David A. International Programming for Microsoft® Windows®, ISBN 1-57231-956-9.

For more information about this book, go to http://mspress.microsoft.com/books/2323.htm.