Why isn't UTF-8 allowed as the "ANSI" code page?

Posted by dan04 on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by dan04
Published on 2010-06-08T06:04:48Z Indexed on 2010/06/08 6:12 UTC
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Windows

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utf-8

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mbcs

The Windows _setmbcp function allows any valid code page...

(except UTF-7 and UTF-8, which are not supported)

OK, not supporting UTF-7 makes sense: Characters have non-unique representations and that introduces complexity and security risks.

But why not UTF-8?

As I understand it, the "ANSI" versions of the Windows API functions convert their arguments to UTF-16, call the equivalent "W" function, and convert any strings in the output to "ANSI". This is what I've been doing manually. So why can't Windows do it for me?

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