printing Unicode characters C++ - c++

I'm trying to write a simple command line app to teach myself Japanese, but can't seem to get Unicode characters to print. What am I missing?
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
wcout << L"こんにちは世界\n";
wcout << L"Hello World\n"
system("pause");
}
In this example only "Press any key to continue" is displayed. Tested on Visual C++ 2013.

This is not easy on Windows. Even when you manage to get the text to the Windows console you still need to configure cmd.exe to be able to display Japanese characters.
#include <iostream>
int main() {
std::cout << "こんにちは世界\n";
}
This works fine on any system where:
The compiler's source and execution encodings include the characters.
The output device (e.g., the console) expects text in the same encoding as the compiler's execution encoding.
A font with the appropriate characters is available (usually not a problem).
Most platforms these days use UTF-8 by default for all these encodings and so can support the entire Unicode range with code similar to the above. Unfortunately Windows is not one of these platforms.
wcout << L"こんにちは世界\n";
In this line the string literal data is (at compile time) converted from the source encoding to the execution wide encoding and then (at run time) wcout uses the locale it is imbued with to convert the wchar_t data to char data for output. Where things go wrong is that the default locale is only required to support characters from the basic source character set, which doesn't even include all ASCII characters, let alone non-ASCII characters.
So the conversion results in an error, putting wcout into a bad state. The error has to be cleared before wcout will function again, which is why the second print statement does not output anything.
You can work around this for a limited range of characters by imbuing wcout with a locale that will successfully convert the characters. Unfortunately the encoding that is needed to support the entire Unicode range this way is UTF-8; Although Microsoft's implementation of streams supports other multibyte encodings it very specifically does not support UTF-8.
For example:
wcout.imbue(std::locale(std::locale::classic(), new std::codecvt_utf8_utf16<wchar_t>()));
SetConsoleOutputCP(CP_UTF8);
wcout << L"こんにちは世界\n";
Here wcout will correctly convert the string to UTF-8, and if the output were written to a file instead of the console then the file would contain the correct UTF-8 data. However the Windows console, even though configured here to accept UTF-8 data, simply will not accept UTF-8 data written in this way.
There are a few options:
Avoid the standard library entirely:
DWORD n;
WriteConsoleW(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), L"こんにちは世界\n", 8, &n, nullptr);
Use non-standard magical incantation that will break standard code:
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <io.h>
_setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U8TEXT);
std::wcout << L"こんにちは世界\n";
After setting this mode std::cout << "Hello, World"; will crash.
Use a low level IO API along with manual conversion:
#include <codecvt>
#include <locale>
SetConsoleOutputCP(CP_UTF8);
std::wstring_convert<std::codecvt_utf8_utf16<wchar_t>, wchar_t> convert;
std::puts(convert.to_bytes(L"こんにちは世界\n"));
Using any of these methods, cmd.exe will display the correct text to the best of its ability, by which I mean it will display unreadable boxes. Seven little boxes, for the given string.
You can copy the text out of cmd.exe and into notepad.exe or whatever to see the correct glyphs.

There's a whole article about dealing with Unicode in Windows console
http://alfps.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/unicode-part-1-windows-console-io-approaches/
http://alfps.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/unicode-part-2-utf-8-stream-mode/
Basically, you may implement you own streambuf for std::cout (or std::wcout) in terms of WriteConsoleW and enjoy writing UTF-8 (or whatever Unicode you want) to Windows console without depending on locales, console code pages and even without using wide characters.
It may not look very straightforward, but it's convenient and reusable solution, which is also able to give you a portable utf8-everywhere style user code. Please, don't beat me for my English :)

Or you can change Windows locale to Japanese.

Related

C++ output Unicode in variable

I'm trying to output a string containing unicode characters, which is received with a curl call. Therefore, I'm looking for something similar to u8 and L options for literal strings, but than applicable for variables. E.g.:
const char *s = u8"\u0444";
However, since I have a string containing unicode characters, such as:
mit freundlichen Grüßen
When I want to print this string with:
cout << UnicodeString << endl;
it outputs:
mit freundlichen Gr??en
When I use wcout, it returns me:
mit freundlichen Gren
What am I doing wrong and how can I achieve the correct output. I return the output with RapidJSON, which returns the string as:
mit freundlichen Gr��en
Important to note, the application is a CGI running on Ubuntu, replying on browser requests
If you are on Windows, what I would suggest is using Unicode UTF-16 at the Windows boundary.
It seems to me that on Windows with Visual C++ (at least up to VS2015) std::cout cannot output UTF-8-encoded-text, but std::wcout correctly outputs UTF-16-encoded text.
This compilable code snippet correctly outputs your string containing German characters:
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <io.h>
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
_setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT);
// ü : U+00FC
// ß : U+00DF
const wchar_t * text = L"mit freundlichen Gr\u00FC\u00DFen";
std::wcout << text << L'\n';
}
Note the use of a UTF-16-encoded wchar_t string.
On a more general note, I would suggest you using the UTF-8 encoding (and for example storing text in std::strings) in your cross-platform C++ portions of code, and convert to UTF-16-encoded text at the Windows boundary.
To convert between UTF-8 and UTF-16 you can use Windows APIs like MultiByteToWideChar and WideCharToMultiByte. These are C APIs, that can be safely and conveniently wrapped in C++ code (more details can be found in this MSDN article, and you can find compilable C++ code here on GitHub).
On my system the following produces the correct output. Try it on your system. I am confident that it will produce similar results.
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
string s="mit freundlichen Grüßen";
cout << s << endl;
return 0;
}
If it is ok, then this points to the web transfer not being 8-bit clean.
Mike.
containing unicode characters
You forgot to specify which unicode encoding does the string contain. There is the "narrow" UTF-8, which can be stored in a std::string and printed using std::cout, as well as wider variants, which can't. It is crucial to know which encoding you're dealing with. For the remainder of my answer, I'm going to assume you want to use UTF-8.
When I want to print this string with:
cout << UnicodeString << endl;
EDIT:
Important to note, the application is a CGI running on Ubuntu, replying on browser requests
The concerns here are slightly different from printing onto a terminal.
You need to set the Content-Type response header appropriately or else the client cannot know how to interpret the response. For example Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8.
You still need to make sure that the source string is in fact the correct encoding corresponding to the header. See the old answer below for overview.
The browser has to support the encoding. Most modern browsers have had support for UTF-8 a long time now.
Answer regarding printing to terminal:
Assuming that
UnicodeString indeed contains an UTF-8 encoded string
and that the terminal uses UTF-8 encoding
and the font that the terminal uses has the graphemes that you use
the above should work.
it outputs:
mit freundlichen Gr??en
Then it appears that at least one of the above assumptions don't hold.
Whether 1. is true, you can verify by inspecting the numeric value of each code unit separately and comparing it to what you would expect of UTF-8. If 1. isn't true, then you need to figure out what encoding does the string actually use, and either convert the encoding, or configure the terminal to use that encoding.
The terminal typically, but not necessarily, uses the system native encoding. The first step of figuring out what encoding your terminal / system uses is to figure out what terminal / system you are using in the first place. The details are probably in a manual.
If the terminal doesn't use UTF-8, then you need to convert the UFT-8 string within your program into the character encoding that the terminal does use - unless that encoding doesn't have the graphemes that you want to print. Unfortunately, the standard library doesn't provide arbitrary character encoding conversion support (there is some support for converting between narrow and wide unicode, but even that support is deprecated). You can find the unicode standard here, although I would like to point out that using an existing conversion implementation can save a lot of work.
In the case the character encoding of the terminal doesn't have the needed grapehemes - or if you don't want to implement encoding conversion - is to re-configure the terminal to use UTF-8. If the terminal / system can be configured to use UTF-8, there should be details in the manual.
You should be able to test if the font itself has the required graphemes simply by typing the characters into the terminal and see if they show as they should - although, this test will also fail if the terminal encoding does not have the graphemes, so check that first. Manual of your terminal should explain how to change the font, should it be necessary. That said, I would expect üß to exist in most fonts.

Cannot wcout wide string other than English [duplicate]

I've read a bunch of articles and forums posts discussing this problem all of the solutions seem way too complicated for such a simple task.
Here's a sample code straight from cplusplus.com:
// reading a text file
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main () {
string line;
ifstream myfile ("example.txt");
if (myfile.is_open())
{
while ( myfile.good() )
{
getline (myfile,line);
cout << line << endl;
}
myfile.close();
}
else cout << "Unable to open file";
return 0;
}
It works fine as long as example.txt has only ASCII characters. Things get messy if I try to add, say, something in Russian.
In GNU/Linux it's as simple as saving the file as UTF-8.
In Windows, that doesn't work. Converting the file into UCS-2 Little Endian (what Windows seems to use by default) and changing all the functions into their wchar_t counterparts doesn't do the trick either.
Isn't there some kind of a "correct" way to get this done without doing all kinds of magic encoding conversions?
The Windows console supports unicode, sort of. It does not support left-to-right and "complex scripts". To print a UTF-16 file with Visual C++, use the following:
_setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT);
And use wcout instead of cout.
There is no support for a "UTF8" code page so for UTF-8 you will have to use MultiBytetoWideChar
More on console support for unicode can be found in this blog
The right way to output to a console on Windows using cout is to first call GetConsoleOutputCP, and then convert the input you have into the console code page. Alternatively, use WriteConsoleW, passing a wchar_t*.
For reading UTF-8 or UTF-16 strings from a file, you can use the extended mode string of _wfopen_s and fgetws. I don't think there is a C++ interface for these extensions yet. The easiest way to print to the console is described in Michael Kaplan's blog:
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <io.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
_setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT);
wprintf(L"\x043a\x043e\x0448\x043a\x0430 \x65e5\x672c\x56fd\n");
return 0;
}
Avoid GetConsoleOutputCP, it is only retained for compatibility with the 8-bit API.
While Windows console windows are UCS-2 based, they don't support UTF-8 properly.
You might make things work by setting the console window's active output code page to UTF-8 temporarily, using the appropriate API functions. Note that those functions distinguish between input code page and output code page. However, [cmd.exe] really doesn't like UTF-8 as active code page, so don't set that as a permanent code page.
Otherwise, you can use the Unicode console window functions.
Cheers & hth.,
#include <stdio.h>
int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
// do chcp 65001 in the console before running this
printf ("γασσο γεο!\n");
}
Works perfectly if you do chcp 65001 in the console before running your program.
Caveats:
I'm using 64 bit Windows 7 with VC++ Express 2010
The code is in a file encoded as UTF-8 without BOM - I wrote it in a text editor, not using the VC++ IDE, then used VC++ to compile it.
The console has a TrueType font - this is important
Don't know if these things make too much difference...
Can't speak for chars off the BMP, give it a whirl and leave a comment.
Just to be clear, some here have mentioned UTF8. UTF8 is a multibyte format, which in some documentation is mistakenly referred to as Unicode. Unicode is always just two bytes.
I've used this previously posted solution with Visual Studio 2008. I don't know if if works with later versions of Visual Studio.
#include <iostream>
#include <fnctl.h>
#include <io.h>
#include <tchar.h>
<code ommitted>
_setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT);
std::wcout << _T("This is some text to print\n");
I used macros to switch between std::wcout and std::cout, and also to remove the _setmode call for ASCII builds, thus allowing compiling either for ASCII and UNICODE. This works. I have not yet tested using std::endl, but I that might work wcout and Unicode (not sure), i.e.
std::wcout << _T("This is some text to print") << std::endl;

Is it possible to cout an EM DASH on Linux and Windows? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Output Unicode to console Using C++, in Windows
(5 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I haven't been able to find a way to cout a '—' character, whether I put that in the cout statement like this: cout << "—"; or use char(151), the program prints out a fuzzy undefined character. Do you guys see anything wrong with my code? Is couting a EM DASH even possible?
Edit: I've also tried wcout << L"—"; and std::wcout << wchar_t(0x2014);. Those both print nothing in my terminal.
First of all, EM DASH is an unicode character (just making sure you do know that).
Printing unicode characters depends on what you're printing to.
If you're printing to a Unix terminal (or an emulator), the terminal emulator is using an encoding that supports this character, and that encoding matches the compiler's execution encoding, then you can do what you just did above in your source code cout << "—";
If you're getting fuzzy undefined characters, it is possible that your terminal just doesn't support that character.
If you're in windows (where it is harder), you can do something like this (which is not portable):
#include <iostream>
#include <io.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
int main() {
_setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT);
std::wcout << L"—";
}
There's no universal support for Unicode in C++ and in various terminals, so there won't be a portable solution.
The thing is that the Windows console uses codepages in console by default. It probably uses UTF-16 internally but will always convert to and from the current ANSI codepage when interacting with outside. So simply printing an UTF-16 code point like std::wcout << wchar_t(0x2014); won't work without any prior setup. You need to switch to UTF-8 by running chcp 65001 in the console or _setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT); in code before printing the character out with
std::wcout << L"—";
It will not always work because of the worse Unicode support in Windows console. In many cases the characters don't appear due issues in the renderer or font, replacing with squares or ????. But in that case just copy the text out and paste to any Unicode text box then it will be displayed properly
If you're using Windows in English or some other Western European languages that use codepage 1252/ISO-8859-1 then you can print em-dash which is at the codepoint 151 simply by
cout << (char)151;
If it doesn't work then you're not on codepage 1252. You can change it to 1252 if possible or look up for em-dash in your codepage (if available)
On Linux things are much simpler because UTF-8 are used by default. So you can output the string as normal without resorting to std::wcout
std::cout << "—"; // need to make sure that std::string is in UTF-8
// or use std::cout << u8"—" to force the encoding
In fact you'll often get surprise results if you use wide strings on Linux. std::wcout << L"—" won't often work because of some possible bugs in libc
That said, Windows 10 console now supports UTF-8 perfectly and even allows to use UTF-8 as the locale so if you don't need to support Windows 7 then there's a universal method to print any Unicode strings:
std::cout << u8"—";

How can I use std::imbue to set the locale for std::wcout?

I am trying to use the std::locale mechanism in C++11 to count words in different languages. Specifically, I have std::wstringstream which contains the title of a famous Russian novel ("Crime and Punishment" in English). What I want to do is to use the appropriate locale (ru_RU.utf8 on my Linux machine) to read the stringstream, count the words and print the results. I should also probably note that my system is set to use the en_US.utf8 locale.
The desired result is this:
0: "Преступление"
1: "и"
2: "наказание"
I counted 3 words.
and the last word was "наказание"
That all works when I set the global locale, but not when I attempt to imbue the wcout stream. When I try that, I get this result instead:
0: "????????????"
1: "?"
2: "?????????"
I counted 3 words.
and the last word was "?????????"
Also, when I attempt to use a solution suggested in the comments, (which can be activate by changing #define USE_CODECVT 0 to #define USE_CODECVT 1) I get the error mentioned in this other question.
Those interested in experimenting with the code, or with compiler settings or both may wish to use this live code.
My questions
Why does that not work? Is it because wcout is already open?
Is there way to use imbue rather than setting the global locale to do what I want?
If it makes a difference, I'm using g++ 4.8.3. The full code is shown below.
getwords.cpp
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <sstream>
#include <string>
#include <locale>
#define USE_CODECVT 0
#define USE_IMBUE 1
#if USE_CODECVT
#include <codecvt>
#endif
using namespace std;
int main()
{
#if USE_CODECVT
locale ru("ru_RU.utf8",
new codecvt_utf8<wchar_t, 0x10ffff, consume_header>{});
#else
locale ru("ru_RU.utf8");
#endif
#if USE_IMBUE
wcout.imbue(ru);
#else
locale::global(ru);
#endif
wstringstream in{L"Преступление и наказание"};
in.imbue(ru);
wstring word;
unsigned wordcount = 0;
while (in >> word) {
wcout << wordcount << ": \"" << word << "\"\n";
++wordcount;
}
wcout << "\nI counted " << wordcount << " words.\n"
<< "and the last word was \"" << word << "\"\n";
}
First I did some more test using your code and I can confirm that L"Преступление и наказание" is a correct UTF16 string. I controlled the code of the individual characters, and they are correctly 0x41f, 0x440, 0x435, 0x441, 0x442, 0x443, 0x43f, 0x43b, 0x435, 0x43d, 0x438, 0x435, 0x20, 0x438, 0x20, 0x43d, 0x430, 0x43a, 0x430, 0x437, 0x430, 0x43d, 0x438, 0x435
I could not find any reference about it, but it looks like simply calling imbue is not enough. imbue it a method from basic_ios which is an ancestor of cout and wcout. It does act on numeric conversions, but on all my tests, it has no effect on the charset used for output.
By default, the locale used in a C++ (or C) program is ... the C locale which knows nothing about unicode. All printable ASCII characters (below 128) are outputted as is, and others are replaced with a ?. It is exactly what your program does.
To make it work correctly, you have to select a locale that knows about unicode characters with setlocale. Once this is done, you can change the numeric conversion by calling imbue, and as you selected a unicode charset all will be fine.
So provided your current locale uses an UTF-8 charset, you only have to add
setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
as first line in your program, and the output will be as expected :
0: "Преступление"
1: "и"
2: "наказание"
I counted 3 words.
and the last word was "наказание"
If your current locale does not use UTF-8, choose one that is installed on you system and that supports it. I used setlocale(LC_ALL, "fr_FR.UTF-8");, or even setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_US.UTF-8"); and both worked.
Edit :
In fact, the best way to correctly output unicode to screen is to use setlocale(LC_ALL, "");. It automatically adapts to the current charset. I tested with a stripped down variant using Latin1 charset (my system speaks natively french and not russian ...)
#include <iostream>
#include <locale>
using namespace std;
int main() {
setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
wchar_t ws[] = { 0xe8, 0xe9, 0 };
wcout << ws << endl;
}
I tried it under Linux using UTF-8 charset and ISO-8859-1 (latin1) (resp export LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8 and export LANG=fr_FR.ISO-8859-1) and I got correctly èé in the proper charset. I tried it also under Windows XP, with codepage 851 (oem) and 1252 (ansi) (resp. chcp 850 and chcp 1252 with Lucida console charset), and got èé on the console too.
Edit 2 :
Of course, you can also set a global C++ locale with locale::global(locale(""); with default locale or locale::global(locale("ru_RU.UTF-8"); with russian locale, but it is more than simply calling setlocale. According to the documentation of Gnu implementation of C++ Standard Library about locale : there is only one relation (of the C++ locale mechanism) to the C locale mechanism: the global C locale is modified if a named C++ locale object is set as the global locale", that is: std::locale::global(std::locale("")); affects the C functions as if the following call was made: std::setlocale(LC_ALL, "");. On the other hand, there is no vice versa, that is, calling setlocale has no whatsoever on the C++ locale mechanism, in particular on the working of locale("").
So it really looks like there was an underlying C library mechanizme that should be first enabled with setlocale to allow imbue conversion to work correctly.
In this answer, I'm taking the questions in reverse order, and adding another (with answer) that came up along the way.
Is there way to use imbue rather than setting the global locale to do what I want?
Yes. By default, std::wcout is synchronized to the underlying stdout C stream. So std::wcout can use imbue if that synchronization is turned off, allowing the C++ stream to operate independently. So to modify the original code to use imbue and work as intended only a single line need be added, calling std::ios_base::sync_with_stdio:
std::ios_base::sync_with_stdio(false);
std::wcout.imbue(ru);
Why didn't the original version work?
The standard (I'm referring to INCITS/ISO/IEC 14882-2011[2012]) says very little about the tie to the underlying stdio stream, but in 27.4.3 it says
The object wcout controls output to a stream buffer associated with the object stdout, declared in <cstdio>
Further, without explicitly setting a global locale, the locale is the "C" locale which is US English ASCII, so this appears to imply that stdout will, by default, have an ASCII mapping. Since no Cyrillic characters are represented in ASCII, the underlying stdout is what converts the proper Russian into a series of ? characters.
Why must the sync_with_stdio call precede imbue?
According to 27.5.3.4 of the standard:
If any input or output operation has occurred using the standard streams prior to the call,
the effect is implementation-defined. Otherwise, called with a false argument, it allows the standard streams to operate independently of the standard C streams.
I don't know what languages you're planning on supporting, but there are languages where your algorithm doesn't apply, eg. Japanese. I suggest checking out the word iterators in International Components for Unicode. http://userguide.icu-project.org/boundaryanalysis

C++ spanish question mark

I am beginning developing in C++ and I am developing a simple calculator in console and when my program ask to the user if wants to exit,the character '¿' doesn't appear (The questions in spanish are between '¿' and '?')
Can someone help me?
PD: The problem only happens in Windows,not in Linux
EDIT: Here is the code that output the code:
cout << '¿' <<"Desea salir (S/N)? " ;
There are a few ways to deal with this problem.
The fundamental problem is not that the ¿ doesn't exist in the console, but that the console and your C++ text editor disagree on what that character is. The two are using different character codes for many characters beyond those needed for English. Character codes 32-126 (letters, numbers, punctuation and brackets), are universally the same. However, character codes 128 through 255, which from a Spanish point of view includes all the accented characters, "u with diaeresis" (e.g. "pingüino"), Ñ, and the starting ¿ and ¡, depend on the specific environment.
Why have such an inconvenient disagreement in character codes is a historical accident, interesting on its own but out of the scope of this question. To keep it simple: in the Windows OS, "consoles" (typically) use the list of characters described in OEM Code Page 437, while Windows applications like your C++ editor (typically) use the Windows-1252 Code Page.
There is no portable (universal) solution for this problem, because the issue of differing charsets is a platform-specific problem. Windows is unfortunately somewhat unique in that the editor and (console) outputs use different sets.
The first and simplest solution - which is fine for toy programs - is to just look up the character code that you want from the OEM 437 code-page, and use that. For ¿, that's #168 (0xa8 in hex, or \250 in octal). You can just embed the character code in the string to make clear what you're trying to do, either of these:
std::cout << ""\x0a8""Cu""\x0a0""l es el primer n""\x0a3""mero?\n"; // hex
std::cout << "\250Cu\240l es el primer n\243mero?\n"; // octal
Outputs:
¿Cuál es el primer número?
Note how I had to do the same thing with the ú and the á. Unfortunately, writing strings like this gets unwieldy quickly. using macros or const chars can help, but not much.
A second alternative is to use a Windows function such as CharToOemA. For example1:
#include <windows.h>
...
...
char pregunta[] = "¿Cuál es el primer número\n";
char *pregunta_oem = new char[sizeof(pregunta)/sizeof(char)];
CharToOemA(pregunta, pregunta_oem);
std::cout << pregunta_oem;
delete []pregunta_oem;
For a more complex program, I would wrap that pattern into a utility function or class.
A different approach is to change the Code Page of the console, so that it agrees with your C++ editor and the rest of Windows. You can do that via the CHCP console command, or via the SetConsoleOutputCP() function, but that doesn't work on the default "raster font" used by consoles, so you have to change the font as well. When the font is set to a unicode font like Lucida Console, this works:
std::cout << "¿Cuál es el primer número?\n"; // ┐Cußl es el...
UINT originalCP = GetConsoleOutputCP();
SetConsoleOutputCP(1252);
std::cout << "¿Cuál es el primer número?\n"; // ¿Cuál es el...
SetConsoleOutputCP(originalCP);
(I don't know if you can change the font from the program itself; I have to look that up. The standard way to do it from the console is to click on the tiny icon on the corner, click Properties, Font tab, and pick a font from the list).
1 I have to warn that this snippet contains a number of subtleties that can easily trip a beginner. You have to make sure the source of the text is a char array; if you're using a char pointer, sizeof won't work correctly and you have to use strlen(source)+1. For the source I used the natural option of a char array initialized to a literal, but you can't do that for the destination because the contents of such an array are read/only. If you are using a new'd char array or one that is not initialized to a literal, you can use the same char array for the source and destination. This example feels very C-like.
You can use _setmode function to do that :
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#if defined(WIN32) && !defined(UNIX)
# include <io.h> // for _setmode()
# include <fcntl.h> // for _O_U16TEXT
#endif // WIN32 && !UNIX
int main()
{
#if defined(WIN32) && !defined(UNIX)
_setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT);
//^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
#endif // WIN32 && !UNIX
std::wstring wstr = L"'¿' and '?'";
std::wcout << L"WString : " << wstr << std::endl;
system("pause");
return 0;
}
To write UNICODE chars (assuming LE is the standard Windows variant of UTF-16...) out with the iostream library, call _setmode() with _O_U16TEXT and then use wcout.
But you can't use cout anymore. It throws an assert.
Check this answer.
Assuming you are using simple call to std::cout, you should be able to print Unicode strings, if you set your command line to Unicode mode:
1. Change code page to UTF-8
You can do this by simply calling the command below in your cmd:
chcp 65001
2. Make sure you are using a font which has the characters you want to display
Lucidia Console should do the trick, as it supports ¿ (and other characters included in WGL4).
this character is simply not included in basic ascii. Try using wstring http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/string/wstring/
As you can see in Ascii table, symbol ¿ have the code 168. You can use in output stream \ddd to print some special character.
This is because the command console does not support non-ASCII characters by default (ASCII has mainly English language characters and few accented characters). To get support for characters in other character classes play around with the chcp command. Refer to it's documentation here.
In your case I think you need to run chcp 850 in the console before running your program.