C++ compatibility between Visual Studio and gcc under Linux

Question

I am trying to build a project written in VS 2008 using QtCreator under Linux and I get loads of errors:

/home/ga/dev/CppGroup/MonteCarlo/main.cpp:1: error: stray ‘\377’ in program
/home/ga/dev/CppGroup/MonteCarlo/main.cpp:1: error: stray ‘\376’ in program
/home/ga/dev/CppGroup/MonteCarlo/main.cpp:1: error: stray ‘#’ in program
/home/ga/dev/CppGroup/MonteCarlo/main.cpp:1: warning: null character(s) ignored

etc.

Does it mean that the compiler can't handle unicode correctly? How can I fix it?

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 24 '11 at 11:15

6

That looks like a UTF-16 BOM for little-endian UTF-16. You need to make sure the file is saved as UTF-8 or convert it manually via iconv -f UTF-16LE -t UTF8 myfile.

answered Mar 24 '11 at 11:15

DarkDust

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But I want to make it compile on both systems at the same time... Can I configure VS to save it as utf-8? – Grzenio Mar 24 '11 at 11:17
@Grzenio: See [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/696627/how-to-set-standard-encoding-in-visual-studio) or [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1838899/force-visual-studio-2010-to-save-all-files-in-utf-8) on how to set it, and [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/279673/save-all-files-in-visual-studio-project-as-utf-8) on how to bulk-change all project files. – DarkDust Mar 24 '11 at 11:20
Is it possible to configure on the project or solution level? – Grzenio Mar 24 '11 at 11:58

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 24 '11 at 11:10

1

Ensure the file is encoded in UTF-8. Open it with a text editor that allows you chosing the file encoding (e.g. gedit or notepad++) and convert it. I've had similar issues before, but UTF-8 files work fine (other encodings like UTF-16 won't work).

Edit: Don't convert your resource script (if there's any) to UTF-8. The resource compiler won't be able to read it (at least when using MSVC 2008).

answered Mar 24 '11 at 11:10

Mario

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But I want to make it compile on both systems at the same time... Can I configure VS to save it as utf-8? – Grzenio Mar 24 '11 at 11:15
MSVC will keep UTF-8 if the files are UTF-8 already and it will be able to use them as well. – Mario Mar 24 '11 at 11:16

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 24 '11 at 11:11

0

It may be that your files use windows encoding, with characters like ^M, \r\n... Have you tried to run dos2unix on your source files before compiling ?

answered Mar 24 '11 at 11:11

0x26res

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Windows line breaks are perfectly fine for GCC. – Mario Mar 24 '11 at 11:15

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 24 '11 at 11:11

0

I think i've seen 'stray ...' in file with unicode.

You may configure your editor's or console's (or both) encoding setting to fix it.

answered Mar 24 '11 at 11:11

eugene

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C++ compatibility between Visual Studio and gcc under Linux

4 Answers4