Very often the need arises in Windows C++ programming to convert text between Unicode UTF-16 (which historically has been the native Unicode encoding used by Windows APIs) and UTF-8 (which is the de facto standard for sending text across the Internet and exchanging text between different platforms).

Converting Between Unicode UTF-16 and UTF-8 in Windows C++ Code

by Giovanni Dicanio

From the article:

A detailed discussion on how to convert C++ strings between Unicode UTF-16 and UTF-8 in C++ code using Windows APIs like WideCharToMultiByte, and STL strings and string views.