Problem with expat 1.95.8 li brary built with switch ‘-fshort-wchar’

Hi

 We are using object files built using the Makefile of the expat source 
version 1.95.8, on Sun Solaris 8 Sparc. We are using those object files to 
built customized static library which is having a support for UNICODE as 
well as 'wchar_t' & 'wstring'. The Makefile which is generated by 
configuration script contains '-fshort-wchar', if we are configuring the 
'expat' with flag './configure CFLAGS="-g -O2 -fshort-wchar" 
CPPFLAGS=-DXML_UNICODE_WCHAR_T' . Generally, the xml file which provides an 
input to the 'expat' is having UTF8 encoding and we want support for wchar_t 
in 'expat'.

 As 'expat' is built with '-fshort-wchar', we need to make use of this 
switch in all the libraries and application dependent on 'expat' that also 
requires us to rebuild the built-in libraries of 'g++' like 'libstdc++.so' 
with the switch. Correct us if we are wrong.

 Is there any other way to make use of 'expat' with/without the switch in 
above situation?

 We are not sure about the behavior of 'expat' with non English wide 
characters as the wchar_t is going to be stored as short.

 Thank you,