Declare multibyte character array where bytes > 2

Question

How can I declare a multibyte character array in which each is character is represented for 3 or 4 bytes?

I know I can do: char var[] = "AA"; which will write to memory 6161 and I can do wchar var[] = L"AA"; which will do 00610061. How can I declare a wider character array in C or C++?

Is there any other prefix like the L to instruct the compiler to do so?

Answer 1

Both C and C++ offer char32_t. In C char32_t is a typedef of/same type as uint_least32_t. In C++ char32_t has the same size, signedness, and alignment as std::uint_least32_t, but is a distinct type.

Both of them can be used like

char32_t string[] = U"some text";

Answer 2

You could try this, as long as you don't mind manually typing out each character:

int characters[3] = { 'h', 'e', 'y' };

You can also use a capital U in front of the string literal to get UTF-32:

char32_t characters[] = U"hey";