How to Read Unicode (UTF-8) Files into wstrings on Windows with C 11?

Reading Unicode UTF-8 Files into Wstrings on Windows

Reading Unicode (UTF-8) files into wstrings(s) on Windows can be achieved efficiently using C 11's std::codecvt_utf8 facet.

With std::codecvt_utf8, conversion between UTF-8 byte strings and UCS2 or UCS4 character strings is simplified. This facet enables reading and writing UTF-8 files, both text and binary.

To leverage the facet, create a locale object that encapsulates facets defining the desired localized environment. Once the locale object is created, imbue your stream buffer with it.

Here's an implementation using imbuing:

#include <sstream>
#include <fstream>
#include <codecvt>

std::wstring readFile(const char* filename)
{
    std::wifstream wif(filename);
    wif.imbue(std::locale(std::locale::empty(), new std::codecvt_utf8<wchar_t>));
    std::wstringstream wss;
    wss << wif.rdbuf();
    return wss.str();
}

After imbuing the stream buffer, reading the file into a wstring is straightforward:

std::wstring wstr = readFile("a.txt");

Alternatively, setting the global C locale before working with string streams will eliminate the need for explicit imbuing:

std::locale::global(std::locale(std::locale::empty(), new std::codecvt_utf8<wchar_t>));

This sets the global locale as the default, which will automatically apply to future stream buffers.

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