How to Display and Execute Baltic Characters in Visual Studio 2019 C Projects?

Special Characters in Visual Studio 2019 C Projects: Challenges and Solutions

In Visual Studio 2019, using Baltic characters in the console and executing CMD commands with them poses some challenges. Specifically, the default C console application encounters issues in displaying these characters correctly due to encoding inconsistencies.

Problem with Default Console Application

The problem arises when UTF-8 strings are used in the default console application. When these strings are printed to the console, special characters like 'ā' or 'č' may not be displayed as intended because the console's default encoding is not UTF-8 compatible. As a result, the characters may appear garbled or as question marks.

Solution: Overcoming Encoding Discrepancies

To resolve this issue, you need to ensure that the correct encoding settings are applied throughout your code and project configuration. Here are the key steps:

1. Set Source Code Encoding:
   Use the /source-charset:utf-8 compiler option during compilation to specify that your source code is encoded in UTF-8. This ensures that the compiler interprets your code correctly.
2. Set Execution Charset:
   Use the /execution-charset:utf-8 linker option to specify that the executable should use UTF-8 encoding when being executed. This ensures that the executable displays characters correctly on the console.
3. Set Locale in Code:
   Within your code, use std::locale::global(std::locale{".utf-8"}) to set the global locale to UTF-8. Then, set the locale for your input and output streams using std::cout.imbue(std::locale{}) and std::cin.imbue(std::locale{}).

Example:

<code class="cpp">#include &lt;iostream&gt;
#include &lt;locale&gt;

int main() {
    std::locale::global(std::locale{".utf-8"});

    // Convert UTF-8 string to Latin1 string for CMD execution
    char s2[256] = "āāāčččēēēē";
    char* latin1 = Utf8ToLatin1String(s2);

    // Execute CMD command using the Latin1 string
    std::string cmd = "copy /-y \"" + s2 + ".txt\" C:\PACIENTI\" + s2 + ".txt";
    FILE* pipe = _popen(cmd.c_str(), "r");
    
    return 0;
}</code>

By following these steps, you can ensure that Baltic characters are displayed correctly in the console and that CMD commands executed with these characters work as expected. Remember, it's crucial to address these encoding issues to avoid unexpected behavior or data corruption when working with special characters.

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