This intrigues me, so I'm going to ask - for what reason is wchar_t not used so widely on Linux/Linux-like systems as it is on Windows? Specifically, the Windows API uses wchar_t internally whereas I believe Linux does not and this is reflected in a number of open source packages using char types.

My understanding is that given a character c which requires multiple bytes to represent it, then in a char[] form c is split over several parts of char* whereas it forms a single unit in wchar_t[]. Is it not easier, then, to use wchar_t always? Have I missed a technical reason that negates this difference? Or is it just an adoption problem?