Read unicode file with special characters using std::wifstream

Question

In a Linux environment, I have a piece of code for reading unicode files, similar as shown below.

However, special characters (like danish letters æ, ø and å) are no

Answer 1

You have to use the imbue() method to tell wifstream that the file is encoded as UTF-16, and let it consume the BOM for you. You do not have to seekg() past the BOM manually. For example:

#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <locale>
#include <codecvt>

// open as a byte stream
std::wifstream wif("myfile.txt", std::ios::binary);
if (wif.is_open())
{
    // apply BOM-sensitive UTF-16 facet
    wif.imbue(std::locale(wif.getloc(), new std::codecvt_utf16<wchar_t, 0x10ffff, std::consume_header>));

    std::wstring wline;
    while (std::getline(wif, wline))
    {
        std::wstring convert;
        for (auto c : wline)
        {
            if (c != L'\0')
                convert += c;
        }
    }

    wif.close();
}