What is the simplest way to convert char[] to/from tchar[] in C/C++(ms)?

This seems like a pretty softball question, but I always have a hard time looking up this function because there seem there are so many variations regarding the referencing of char and tchar.

From stackoverflow CrashCodes

• TCHAR is a Microsoft-specific typedef for either char or wchar_t (a wide character).

  Conversion to char depends on which of these it actually is. If TCHAR is actually a char, then you can do a simple cast, but if it is truly a wchar_t, you'll need a routine to convert between character sets. See the function MultiByteToWideChar()

  CrashCodes : You bring up an excellent point. Although in this particular situation I think the TChar is a wide character I'll only need to do the conversion if it isn't. which I gotta check somehow.
  From Chris Johnson

• MultiByteToWideChar but also see "A few of the gotchas of MultiByteToWideChar".

  Martin York : What happens if TCHAR is CHAR?

  jeffm : I read the question as stipulating that a conversion was necessary, but point taken.
  From jeffm

• There are a few answers in this post as well, especially if you're looking for a cross-platform solution:

  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/148403/utf8-tofrom-wide-char-conversion-in-stl

  Martin York : How can it be crosss platform there is no TCHAR anyware else. Its windows specific.
  From Mark Ransom

• The simplest way is to use the conversion macros:

  • CW2A
  • CA2W
  • etc...

  MSDN

  Vinay : we should not use these conversions, because if we call these in recursion, it won't release the memory

  bdonlan : @Vinay Create a helper function that calls one of these, then copies the result into the heap or into another buffer. Once the helper function returns, the stack memory is released.
  From RichS

• Although in this particular situation I think the TChar is a wide character I'll only need to do the conversion if it isn't. which I gotta check somehow.

  if (sizeof(TCHAR) != sizeof(wchar_t))
  {  .... }
  

  The cool thing about that is both sizes of the equals are constants, which means that the compiler will handle (and remove) the if(), and if they are equal, remove everything inside the braces

  From James Curran

• Here is the CPP code that duplicates _TCHAR * argv[] to char * argn[].

  http://www.wincli.com/?p=72

  If you adopting old code to Windows, simple use define mentioned in the code as optional.

  From Dmitry Obukhov