the L character indicates that the string literal is a "wide string literal". In other words, an array of wchar_t rather than just plain old char.

the 'wide char' is usually used for internationalisation, where you might want to use unicode instead of standard 1-byte characters.
(Note - the size of wchar_t is not 'set in stone', though on most systems I'm aware of, it usually supports at least UTF-16)

the C++ library has a whole bunch of wide character tools, all of which are similar to their 'narrow character' equivalents, but prefixed with a w. eg, wcout, wstring, wcin, etc.

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