Can someone explain L"

[Midas]

What is L" ?

Is it some kind of function to convert text?

I am new to VC++, is it VC++ specifics?

[Roy H]

This is a macro which according Micorsoft documenation does the following:

L (converts following character or string to its Unicode counterpart)

[Midas]

Is this ANSI standard?

[Roy H]

Midas,

I'm assuming your seeing the use of L("some string") is in code samples for Microsoft Visual Studio (you'll see this alot in ADO samples). If not then my response is not the answer to your question. If so then this Macro is used to provide support from the same code base for single-byte, multi-byte, and unicode. The following snippet is directly from Microsoft documenation:

To simplify transporting code for international use, the Microsoft run-time library provides Microsoft-specific “generic-text” mappings for many data types, routines, and other objects. You can use these mappings, which are defined in TCHAR.H, to write generic code that can be compiled for single byte, multibyte, or Unicode, depending on a manifest constant you define using a #define statement. Generic-text mappings are Microsoft extensions that are not ANSI compatible.

So as you can see this has nothing to do with the C++ language at all.