How to use Unicode (UTF-8) in C++ [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Unicode in C++

If I remembered correctly, the default character and string encoding in C++ are ASCII. Is there a simple way to enable Unicode support?

Answer 1

Go read this first: The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)

Answer 2

Current C++ doesn't specify encoding in any way. You might look into an actual Unicode library like ICU or, on some architectures and implementations you can use wchar_t to manipulate and hold Unicode strings.

Edit: This answer was referring to C++03. As noted, it doesn't apply any longer.