LPWSTR

LPWSTR stands for Long Pointer to Wide String. It is a Windows API data type that denotes a pointer to a null-terminated wide character string, typically encoded in UTF-16 on Windows. In the Windows headers, LPWSTR is defined as a typedef for wchar_t*, or equivalently for WCHAR*, making it a pointer to a mutable wide string.

LPWSTR is part of the Windows API's distinction between writable and read-only strings. When a string should not be modified by the callee, LPCWSTR (const wchar_t*) is used. In many builds, LPTSTR maps to LPWSTR when UNICODE is defined, and to LPSTR when not.

Usage: Many Win32 functions accept LPWSTR to supply input strings or receive written output. For example, GetModuleFileNameW takes an HMODULE, an LPWSTR buffer, and its size, and writes the module's path to the buffer. If a function returns a string that the caller must free, the required deallocation method is defined by the API (for example, CoTaskMemFree for COM-allocated strings).

Relationship to other types: PWSTR is a synonym for LPWSTR; LPCWSTR denotes a pointer to a constant wide string. LPSTR is the narrow-character counterpart for char-based strings.

Summary: LPWSTR is a core Windows type used for mutable wide-character strings in Unicode-aware APIs, reflecting Windows’ use of UTF-16 encoding for wide strings and its distinction between writable and read-only string parameters.