UTF8 to/from wide char conversion in STL

Question

Is it possible to convert UTF8 string in a std::string to std::wstring and vice versa in a platform independent manner? In a Windows application I would use MultiByteToWideC

Answer 1

Created my own library for utf-8 to utf-16/utf-32 conversion - but decided to make a fork of existing project for that purpose.

https://github.com/tapika/cutf

(Originated from https://github.com/noct/cutf )

API works with plain C as well as with C++.

Function prototypes looks like this: (For full list see https://github.com/tapika/cutf/blob/master/cutf.h )

//
//  Converts utf-8 string to wide version.
//
//  returns target string length.
//
size_t utf8towchar(const char* s, size_t inSize, wchar_t* out, size_t bufSize);

//
//  Converts wide string to utf-8 string.
//
//  returns filled buffer length (not string length)
//
size_t wchartoutf8(const wchar_t* s, size_t inSize, char* out, size_t outsize);

#ifdef __cplusplus

std::wstring utf8towide(const char* s);
std::wstring utf8towide(const std::string& s);
std::string  widetoutf8(const wchar_t* ws);
std::string  widetoutf8(const std::wstring& ws);

#endif

Sample usage / simple test application for utf conversion testing:

#include "cutf.h"

#define ok(statement)                                       \
    if( !(statement) )                                      \
    {                                                       \
        printf("Failed statement: %s\n", #statement);       \
        r = 1;                                              \
    }

int simpleStringTest()
{
    const wchar_t* chineseText = L"主体";
    auto s = widetoutf8(chineseText);
    size_t r = 0;

    printf("simple string test:  ");

    ok( s.length() == 6 );
    uint8_t utf8_array[] = { 0xE4, 0xB8, 0xBB, 0xE4, 0xBD, 0x93 };

    for(int i = 0; i < 6; i++)
        ok(((uint8_t)s[i]) == utf8_array[i]);

    auto ws = utf8towide(s);
    ok(ws.length() == 2);
    ok(ws == chineseText);

    if( r == 0 )
        printf("ok.\n");

    return (int)r;
}

And if this library does not satisfy your needs - feel free to open following link:

http://utf8everywhere.org/

and scroll down at the end of page and pick up any heavier library which you like.