Why is it called 'wchar_t' and not simply 'wchar'?

Question

I've often wondered why C++ went with the name wchar_t instead of simply wchar , and I've never been able to find an answer. Search engines are no help because they think I'm asking about Windows' WCHAR type. Any ideas?

Answer 1

这是来自C的遗产，其中wchar_t是typedef ，而typedef在C标准库中具有该后缀。

Answer 2

The C standard library has used the _t suffix for many of the types that are defined in the library (as opposed to the types that are baked into C itself as keywords).

For example, there's time_t , wchar_t , uint32_t , size_t , ptrdiff_t , div_t , etc.

Of interest (to me anyway) is that the C standard doesn't reserve names of that form for itself. The C standard does indicate that names that start with " str ", " mem ", and a few other prefixes might be added to the standard in the future, but it doesn't do the same with names that end in " _t " - except that names that start with " int " or " uint " and end with " _t " might be added to <stdint.h> in the future. However, POSIX does reserve all names that end in " _t ".

Answer 3

I think this was a 'phase' in the growing up of C and C++. The need for some new types was felt but adding new keywords is always disputed. Some code was already using wchar , far less code would have used wchar_t . Note that size_t and diff_t are of the same era.