Locale-Sensitive C/C++ String Operation Functions

Internationalization (I18n) Discussion:

This class of functions assume single-byte character strings. The appropriate wide character or multibyte equivalent function should be used within the internationalized application. In many cases, the multibyte or wide character equivalent function must be used because these single byte functions will often return nonsensical information if parsing individual bytes of a multibyte character. When applicable, use the wide character equivalent function versus the multibyte equivalent function.

8-bit characters can only store 256 unique characters, which is not suitable to encode characters of non-Latin-based character sets.