On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 10:20 AM, Paul Steckler
<Paul.Steckler@nicta.com.au> wrote:

>  2) if I write the equivalent C program and compile it on Windows, 8-bit
> characters are passed as arguments and spat back just fine

Just tested with MSVC 9.0 - exactly the same problem. Try this

#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
  for (int i=0; i < argc; ++i) {
    puts(argv[i]);
  }
  return 0;
}

and you'll see.

- Dmitry Bely