LPCSTR, LPCTSTR and LPTSTR

To answer the first part of your question:

LPCSTR is a pointer to a const string (LP means Long Pointer)

LPCTSTR is a pointer to a const TCHAR string, (TCHAR being either a wide char or char depending on whether UNICODE is defined in your project)

LPTSTR is a pointer to a (non-const) TCHAR string

In practice when talking about these in the past, we've left out the "pointer to a" phrase for simplicity, but as mentioned by lightness-races-in-orbit they are all pointers.

This is a great codeproject article describing C++ strings (see 2/3 the way down for a chart comparing the different types)

Quick and dirty:

LP == Long Pointer. Just think pointer or char*

C = Const, in this case, I think they mean the character string is a const, not the pointer being const.

STR is string

the T is for a wide character or char (TCHAR) depending on compiler options.

Bonus Reading

From What does the letter "T" in LPTSTR stand for?: ^archive

What does the letter "T" in LPTSTR stand for?

October 17th, 2006

The “T” in LPTSTR comes from the “T” in TCHAR. I don’t know for certain, but it seems pretty likely that it stands for “text”. By comparison, the “W” in WCHAR probably comes from the C language standard, where it stands for “wide”.

8-bit AnsiStrings

• char: 8-bit character (underlying C/C++ data type)
• CHAR: alias of char (Windows data type)
• LPSTR: null-terminated string of CHAR (Long Pointer)
• LPCSTR: constant null-terminated string of CHAR (Long Pointer Constant)

16-bit UnicodeStrings

• wchar_t: 16-bit character (underlying C/C++ data type)
• WCHAR: alias of wchar_t (Windows data type)
• LPWSTR: null-terminated string of WCHAR (Long Pointer)
• LPCWSTR: constant null-terminated string of WCHAR (Long Pointer Constant)

depending on UNICODE define

• TCHAR: alias of WCHAR if UNICODE is defined; otherwise CHAR
• LPTSTR: null-terminated string of TCHAR (Long Pointer)
• LPCTSTR: constant null-terminated string of TCHAR (Long Pointer Constant)

So:

Bonus Reading

TCHAR → Text Char (archive.is)

Why is the default 8-bit codepage called "ANSI"?

From Unicode and Windows XP
by Cathy Wissink
Program Manager, Windows Globalization
Microsoft Corporation
May 2002

Despite the underlying Unicode support on Windows NT 3.1, code page support continued to be necessary for many of the higher-level applications and components included in the system, explaining the pervasive use of the “A” [ANSI] versions of the Win32 APIs rather than the “W” [“wide” or Unicode] versions. (The term “ANSI” as used to signify Windows code pages is a historical reference, but is nowadays a misnomer that continues to persist in the Windows community. The source of this comes from the fact that the Windows code page 1252 was originally based on an ANSI draft, which became ISO Standard 8859-1. However, in adding code points to the range reserved for control codes in the ISO standard, the Windows code page 1252 and subsequent Windows code pages originally based on the ISO 8859-x series deviated from ISO. To this day, it is not uncommon to have the development community, both within and outside of Microsoft, confuse the 8859-1 code page with Windows 1252, as well as see “ANSI” or “A” used to signify Windows code page support.)

Adding to John and Tim's answer.

Unless you are coding for Win98, there are only two of the 6+ string types you should be using in your application

• LPWSTR
• LPCWSTR

The rest are meant to support ANSI platforms or dual compilations. Those are not as relevant today as they used to be.