Unexpected output of std::wcout << L"élève"; in Windows Shell

Question

While testing some functions to convert strings between wchar_t and utf8 I met the following weird result with Visual C++ express 2008

std::wcout << L"élève" << std::endl;

prints out "ÚlÞve:" which is obviously not what is expected.

This is obviously a bug. How can that be ? How am I suppose to deal with such "feature" ?

Answer 1

The C++ compiler does not support Unicode in code files. You have to replace those characters with their escaped versions instead.

Try this:

std::wcout << L"\x00E9l\x00E8ve" << std::endl;

Also, your console must support Unicode as well.

UPDATE:

It's not going to produce the desired output in your console, because the console does not support Unicode.

Answer 2

You might also want to take a look at this question. It shows how you can actually hard-code unicode characters into files using some compilers (I'm not sure what the options would be got MSVC).

Answer 3

I found these related questions with useful answers http://stackoverflow.com/questions/379240/is-there-a-windows-command-shell-that-will-display-unicode-characters http://stackoverflow.com/questions/442735/how-can-i-embed-unicode-string-constants-in-a-source-file

Answer 4

You IDE and the compiler use the ANSI code page. The console uses the OEM code page.

It also matter what are you doing with those conversion functions.

Answer 5

This is obviously a bug. How can that be?

While other operating systems have dispensed with legacy character encodings and switched to UTF-8, Windows uses two legacy encodings: An "OEM" code page (used at the command prompt) and an "ANSI" code page (used by the GUI).

Your C++ source file is in ANSI code page 1252 (or possibly 1254, 1256, or 1258), but your console is interpreting it as OEM code page 850.