How Can I Display Unicode Characters Correctly in the Windows Console Using C ?

How to Display Unicode Characters in Windows Console Using C

Problem Summary

When attempting to output Unicode characters to the Windows console using cout in C , strange characters are displayed instead. Why does this occur, and is it possible to display Unicode characters correctly?

Solution

The issue arises from the default behavior of the Windows console, which doesn't handle Unicode outputs. To resolve this, the wide-characters output stream std::wcout can be used instead of cout.

#include <iostream>

int main() {
    std::wcout << L"Hello World!" << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

However, even with std::wcout, the console may still fail to handle Unicode outputs. To address this, the console can be configured manually.

Manual Configuration Options

To manually configure the console:

• Run cmd with the /u argument: This enables Unicode support when starting the command prompt.
• Call chcp 65001: This changes the output format to support Unicode.
• Set a Unicode font in the console: Fonts like Lucida Console Unicode provide better support for Unicode characters.

Alternative Solution

Another solution is to use _setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT);. This function requires the inclusion of fcntl.h and io.h, and allows the output stream to handle Unicode characters.

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