Handling of UTF-16 string data type in Delphi XE (best practice)

Question

So much information about Unicode but hard for for me to get a conclusion.

I'm working on an multi-language Delphi XE5 application and now I face this problem with this unicode characters. Honestly I don't want to understand the magic behind, I just want to see them work in my application.

Before it was simple. In general use String data type. Now I've read about WideString, UnicodeString, AnsiString and the fact that String in XE5 is compliant with UTF-16

I've tested with WideString and the lating characters like (șțăîâ) are working, but it's still not clear if WideString is the best one or not. Should I use UnicodeString or else?

So, If I should make a multi-language application that support all languages, in the end, what kind of data type should I use? Is it any possibility to maintain String type and get the same results like WideString?

Remark: I use inside my application FireDac components, but this should not matter.

Answer 1

In modern Delphi "string" is a shortcut to "UnicodeString" real data type. Use it unless have to forced to use other types.

WideString is but Delphi pseudonym for Microsoft OLE BSTR type and lacks reference counting. That disables copy-on-write optimizations and makes those string work slower than UnicodeString in general (the very data buffer is copied time and again instead of just passing new pointer to it). Unless you need exactly those features - better use usual strings. However for i18n both those types work enough.