Why does gcc have “â” in all its error messages?

Question

For some reason, my installation of gcc seems to be printing an \"a with a carat\" character in place of all %s\'s in its error messages, e.g.,

test.c:4: err         


        

Answer 1

Seems like madness to me, but I just wanted to put in that you may be able to Google for it more easily by calling the ^ a circumflex, which is what it's usually called when used as an accent.