How do I print UTF-8 from c++ console application on Windows

Question

For a C++ console application compiled with Visual Studio 2008 on English Windows (XP,Vista or 7). Is it possible to print out to the console and correctly display UTF-8 encoded Japanese using cout or wcout?

Answer 1

In the console, enter chcp 65001 to change the code page to that of UTF-8.

Answer 2

The Windows console uses the OEM code page by default to display output.

To change the code page to Unicode enter chcp 65001 in the console, or try to change the code page programmatically with SetConsoleOutputCP.

Note that you probably have to change the font of the console to one that has glyphs in the unicode range.

Answer 3

I've never actually tried setting the console code-page to UTF8 (not sure why it wouldn't work... the console can handle other multi-byte code-pages just fine), but there are a couple of functions to look up: SetConsoleCP and SetConsoleOutputCP.

You'll probably also need to make sure you're using a console font that is capable of displaying your characters. There's the SetCurrentConsoleFontEx function, but it's only available on Vista and above.

Hope that helps.

Answer 4

Here's an article from MVP Michael Kaplan on how to correctly output UTF-16 through the console. You could convert your UTF-8 to UTF-16 and output that.