C++ Unicode Encryption Library Required (Or is it?)

Question

I need to encryption several pieces of text in a file along side unencrypted text in the same file. All the data is Unicode text.

In all the encryption libraries I have looked at Crypto++ Botan Etc... None of them "appear" to provide Unicode aware methods for encrypting / decrypting data E.G. data can be passed in/out using char, string instead of wchar wstring. Does this matter? Just looking for some guidance.

Answer 1

Encryption libraries will use your data as a binary blob, not as characters. So it doesn't matter in what encoding the data is.

Encoding only affects interpretation of the data, not the data itself.

In other words: It doesn't matter

Answer 2

Encryption works at byte level. It always requires binary blob as an input. So It does not matter in which encoding you are using to interpret data.