Convert UTF-16 to UTF-8 under Windows and Linux, in C

Question

I was wondering if there is a recommended 'cross' Windows and Linux method for the purpose of converting strings from UTF-16LE to UTF-8? or one should use different methods for each environment?

I've managed to google few references to 'iconv' , but for somreason I can't find samples of basic conversions, such as - converting a wchar_t UTF-16 to UTF-8.

Anybody can recommend a method that would be 'cross', and if you know of references or a guide with samples, would very appreciate it.

Thanks, Doori Bar

Solution 1

Thanks guys, this is how I managed to solve the 'cross' windows and linux requirement:

1. Downloaded and installed: MinGW , and MSYS
2. Downloaded the libiconv source package
3. Compiled libiconv via MSYS.

That's about it.

Solution 2

Change encoding to UTF-8 with PowerShell:

Get-Content PATH\temp.txt -Encoding Unicode | Set-Content -Encoding UTF8 PATH2\temp.txt

Solution 3

If you don't want to use ICU,

1. Windows: WideCharToMultiByte
2. Linux: iconv (Glibc)

Solution 4

The open source ICU library is very commonly used.

Solution 5

#include <iconv.h>

wchar_t *src = ...; // or char16_t* on non-Windows platforms
int srclen = ...;
char *dst = ...;
int dstlen = ...;
iconv_t conv = iconv_open("UTF-8", "UTF-16");
iconv(conv, (char*)&src, &srclen, &dst, &dstlen);
iconv_close(conv);

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