For the purpose of this question I'm only interested in desktop applications, both GUI and command line.
What are the differences between the Universal C Runtime aka C Run-Time Library and the
Desktop APIs?
What's the difference in terms of availability – which API runs on more versions of Windows? Is there a size/performance cost to using both in the same application? What's the difference in robustness in handling of edge cases e.g. a unicode filename?
It seems the Desktop APIs are more powerful than the Universal C Runtime? Is the latter built on the former, making the former a strict superset in terms of functionality? Is for example _open in fact implemented on top of CreateFileW?