Possibility to use 'wchar_t' string pointers in LabVIEW DLLs?

I'm planning a Windows-only measurement system that will be written in C++. This system should offer a DLL based plugin system, so colleagues can create some kind of device drivers for external hardware by programming specific DLL's themselves.

There are many clever guys here having experience in NI LabVIEW and it is very likely that some of them will create those DLLs with that dev system. From my own (not very up-to-date) experiences with LV I can remember that there was no possibility to create or consume DLLs which make use of wchar_t encoded string pointer parameters back then.

As my measurement system's API will only expose string parameters as wchar_t, would this be a problem for the LabVIEW guys or do I have to provide extra functions with string params to be called by LV DLLs (which I try to avoid)?

Solution

LabVIEW does not have good build in support for Unicode (or wchar_t) and using them in the program might be a big hassle. I think you have several options:

Rethink the use of wchar_t, for me it is surprising that for a measurement device you would necessarily need to use wchar_t. Of course that is completely depended on you system.
Write a wrapper dll for you dll for communication with LabVIEW or any language not supporting wchar_t.
Write a conversion function in Labview that retrieves the bare wchar_t array as integer array and convert them to ASCII code. Use this function after calls to your dll to go to ASCII code.

It is good that you think ahead and already try to create DLLs that LabVIEW can communicate with. I think you just need to take it a step further and go talk to the Labview Guys at you company to see what solution they prefer, that makes later integration so much easier.