Output unicode strings in Windows console app

Question

Hi I was trying to output unicode string to a console with iostreams and failed.

I found this: Using unicode font in c++ console app and this snippet work

Answer 1

There are a few issues with the mswcrt and io streams.

1. Trick _setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT); working only for MS VC++ not MinGW-GCC. Moreover sometimes it is brings to crashes depending on Windows configuration.
2. SetConsoleCP(65001) for UTF-8. May fail in many multibyte character scenarios, but is is always OK for UTF-16LE
3. You need to restore previews console codepage on application exit.

Windows console supports UNICODE with the ReadConsole and WriteConsole functions in UTF-16LE mode. Background effect - piping in this case will not work. I.e. myapp.exe >> ret.log brings to 0 byte ret.log file. If you are ok with this fact you can try my library as following.

const char* umessage = "Hello!\nПривет!\nПривіт!\nΧαιρετίσματα!\nHelló!\nHallå!\n";

...
#include 
#include 
...

std::ostream& cout = io::console::out_stream();
cout << umessage
<< 1234567890ull << '\n'
<< 123456.78e+09 << '\n'
<< 12356.789e+10L << '\n'
<< std::hex << 0xCAFEBABE
<< std::endl;

Library will auto-convert your UTF-8 into UTF-16LE and write it into console using WriteConsole. As well as there are error and input streams. Another library benefit - colors.

Link on example app: https://github.com/incoder1/IO/tree/master/examples/iostreams

The library homepage: https://github.com/incoder1/IO

Screenshot: