conflicts: definition of wchar_t string in C++ standard and Windows implementation?

Question

From c++2003 2.13

A wide string literal has type “array of n const wchar_t” and has static storage duration, whe

Answer 1

Windows knows nothing about wchar_t, because wchar_t is a programming concept. Conversely, wchar_t is just storage, and it knows nothing about the semantic value of the data you store in it (that is, it knows nothing about Unicode or ASCII or whatever.)

If a compiler or SDK that targets Windows defines wchar_t to be 16 bits, then that compiler may be in conflict with the C++0x standard. (I don't know whether there are some get-out clauses that allow wchar_t to be 16 bits.) But in any case the compiler could define wchar_t to be 32 bits (to comply with the standard) and provide runtime functions to convert to/from UTF-16 for when you need to pass your wchar_t* to Windows APIs.