Notes on Internationalization for the Alarm Interested Process 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() with string pointers instead of using 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 CD and its web site. To find documentation on the web site, go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/default.asp and search for MBBCS.

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

The following book is also available:

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