How to set low and high bytes of a wchar_t ?

[Mike Pliam]

I have a method of converting a wide char array to an unsigned char array. Now I need to be able to convert back (from unsigned char array to wide char array) but cannot figure out how to do that.

Here's my wc2uc method which uses built in macros (BTW, where do these come from? Are they unique to Windows API or are they part of C standard ?):

int wcstoucs(wchar_t wcs[], int nsz, unsigned char uc[] )
{
	//uc = new unsigned char [ 2 * nsz + 1 ];
	//memset(uc, 0x00, 2 * nsz + 1);
	wchar_t wch = ' ';
	int wdx = 0;
	for(size_t i = 0; i < 2 * nsz; i+=2)
	{
		wch = wcs[wdx];
		//pb[i] = LOBYTE(wch);      // bigEndian
		//pb[i+1] = HIBYTE(wch);
		uc[i] = HIBYTE(wch);		// littleEndian (x86)
		uc[i+1] = LOBYTE(wch);
		wdx++;
	}
	return 2 * nsz;

}// wcstoucs(wchar_t wcs[], int nsz, unsigned char uc[] )

And here's a method that only depends upon what I am certain is native 'C':

	// given a wchar_t get the low and the hi order bytes
	wchar_t wch;
	byte lobyte, hibyte;

	wch = 0xABCD;
	lobyte  = wch &0xff;
	hibyte = wch >> 8;

	printf("wch = %0.4X\n", wch);     // ABCD
	printf("lobyte =: %0.2X\n", lobyte);   // CD
	printf("hibyte =: %0.2X\n", hibyte);   // AB

But we run into an lvalue problem if we try to inverse the operation:

	wchar_t wch = 0x0000;
	unsigned char ucb = 0x94;
	// set the low byte
	LOBYTE(wch) = ucb;  // Error: Expression must be a modifiable lvalue

So how to set the hi and lo bytes of a wchar_t ?