wcout and wcerr: How to get it to work with unicode?

Question

#include <iostream>                           
#include <clocale>                            
#include <string>                             

int main() {                                  
    std::setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_US.utf8");     
    std::wstring str(L"Τὴ γλῶσσα μοῦ ἔδωσαν");
    std::wcout << str << std::endl;           
    std::wcerr << str << std::endl;           
}

This produces no output on the terminal.

How can I get it to produce UTF-8 output? I figure that ought to be something supported by C++.

I am aware of the utfcpp library, which I am using, but the question is specifically whether there is a stdlib way to print out UTF8.

Positive. I can view test files with lots of cool glyphs in them in Vim and echoing them through the shell. — Steven Lu, Jul 05 '13 at 03:54
If you're using UTF-8, why bother with `wchar_t`-related things? — jamesdlin, Jul 05 '13 at 04:20
@jamesdlin Excellent question. I have a different library which uses wstring internally for doing things. It happens to work well when given Unicode data, so there is no reason not to stick with it. — Steven Lu, Jul 05 '13 at 04:26

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:32

I got it by following this.

std::setlocale(LC_ALL, ""); is the magic incantation.

This worked on my trivial test program. However my full program still completely fails at printing out wstrings.

That is fine (well, no, it is still somewhat alarming), I will avoid relying on stdlib, and do it myself with the help of utfcpp library, which is excellent. This way I can use cout and cerr for everything and all will be well.

wcout and wcerr: How to get it to work with unicode?

1 Answers1