C++ Code to cout international characters using Visual Studio 2015

Question

How can I "cout" in C++ inside Visual Studio Output Window, this strings, now we have C++14 revision: (All i get is no symbols, or questions marks).

#include <iostream>
using std::cout;

int main()
{
    cout << "Ñá" << ".\n"; //Spanish

    cout << "forêt intérêt" << ".\n";  //French

    cout << "Gesäß" << ".\n";  //German

    cout << "取消波蘇日奇諾" << ".\n";  //Chinesse

    cout << "日本人のビット" << ".\n";  //Japanese

    cout << "немного русский" << ".\n";  //Russian

    cout << "ένα κομμάτι της ελληνικής" << ".\n";  //Greek

    cout << "ਯੂਨਾਨੀ ਦੀ ਇੱਕ ਬਿੱਟ" << ".\n";  //Punjabi

    cout << "کمی از ایران " << ".\n"; //Persian

    cout << "కానీ ఈ ఏమి నరకం ఉంది?" << ".\n"; //Telugu

    cout << "Но какво, по дяволите, е това?" << ".\n"; //Bulgarian

    cout.flush();
    return 0;
}

Besides, what's the proper Visual Studio configuration to reach the goal to "cout" this strings properly? (Fonts able to show this characters, unicode settings, etc...).

As far as I know:

In the project properties>General, you must have "Character Set" to "Use unicode character Set".

In C/C++>Preprocessor, you must have Preprocessor definitions as UNICODE.

In VisualStudio menu of Tools>Options>Environment>Fonts and Colors, must use "Lucida Console", or "Consolas" fonts, in text editor and in Output Window, to get a font able to show the characters.

But this isn't enough.

Answer 1

Some of those suggested duplicates look out-of-date with C++14, where it’s much easier. This should work, portably, if you have your locale set properly. To do this, you want to set your console font to Lucida Console or Consolas, run chcp 65001 in the console before running the program (or edit the registry to do this by default), set the character set of your source file to multibyte (UTF-8) or Unicode (UTF-16), and set the font of the IDE to Consolas.

If this is too much of a rigmarole, other people have posted instructions for how to change the code page within the program, but you still want to save your source file as UTF-8 so you can use the foreign characters in string constants, and to change your font to one that can display them.

#include <cstddef>
#include <iostream>
#include <locale>

using std::cout;
using std::endl;

constexpr char * const texts[] = {
  u8"Ñá", //Spanish
  u8"forêt intérêt", //French
  u8"Gesäß", //German
  u8"取消波蘇日奇諾", //Chinese
  u8"日本人のビット", //Japanese
  u8"немного русский", //Russian
  u8"ένα κομμάτι της ελληνικής", // Greek
  u8"ਯੂਨਾਨੀ ਦੀ ਇੱਕ ਬਿੱਟ", // Punjabi (wtf?). xD
  u8"کمی از ایران ", // Persian (I know it, from 300 movie)
  u8"కానీ ఈ ఏమి నరకం ఉంది?", //Telugu (telu-what?)
  u8"Но какво, по дяволите, е това?" //Bulgarian
};

constexpr size_t ntexts = sizeof(texts) / sizeof(texts[0]);

int main(void)
{
  std::locale::global(std::locale(""));
  cout.imbue(std::locale());

  for ( size_t i = 0; i < ntexts; ++i )
    cout << texts[i] << endl;

  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

You can alternatively make them wide-character strings and use wcout instead of cout. The following might work better in a situation where you don’t have a utf-8 locale set:

#include <cstddef>
#include <iostream>
#include <locale>

using std::wcout;
using std::endl;

constexpr wchar_t * const texts[] = {
  L"Ñá", //Spanish
  L"forêt intérêt", //French
  L"Gesäß", //German
  L"取消波蘇日奇諾", //Chinese
  L"日本人のビット", //Japanese
  L"немного русский", //Russian
  L"ένα κομμάτι της ελληνικής", // Greek
  L"ਯੂਨਾਨੀ ਦੀ ਇੱਕ ਬਿੱਟ", // Punjabi (wtf?). xD
  L"کمی از ایران ", // Persian (I know it, from 300 movie)
  L"కానీ ఈ ఏమి నరకం ఉంది?", //Telugu (telu-what?)
  L"Но какво, по дяволите, е това?" //Bulgarian
};

constexpr size_t ntexts = sizeof(texts) / sizeof(texts[0]);

int main(void)
{
  std::locale::global(std::locale(""));
  wcout.imbue(std::locale());

  for ( size_t i = 0; i < ntexts; ++i )
    wcout << texts[i] << endl;

  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

Imbuing with the current locale, as in these examples, should set up the streams to use the right character set on output automatically. The second example is less likely to assume that the strings are in the wrong character set.

Answer 2

You can use script table from Unicode.org to determine a range you character belongs to.

Probably you need something like g_unichar_get_script function in glib.