Is there a format specifier that always means char string with _tprintf?

Question

When you build an app on Windows using TCHAR support, %s in _tprintf() means char * string for Ansi builds and wchar_t * for Unicode builds while %S means the reverse.

But are there any format specifiers that always mean char * string no matter if it's an Ansi or Unicode build? Since even on Windows UTF-16 is not really used for files or networking it turns out to still be fairly often that you'll want to deal with byte-based strings regardless of the native character type you compile your app as.

Answer 1

The h modifier forces both %s and %S to char*, and the l modifier forces both to wchar_t*, ie: %hs, %hS, %ls, and %lS.

Answer 2

This might also solve your problem:

_TCHAR *message;
_tprintf(_T("\n>>>>>> %d") TEXT(" message is:%s\n"),4,message);