How to output unicode characters in C/C++

Question

I have problems with outputing unicode characters in Windows console. I am using Windows XP and Code Blocks 12.11 with mingw32-g++ compiler.

What is the proper way to output unicode characters in Windows console with C or C++?

This is my C++ code:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    cout << "šđč枊ĐČĆŽ" << endl; // doesn't work

    string s = "šđč枊ĐČĆŽ";
    cout << s << endl;            // doesn't work

    return 0;
}

Thanks in advance. :)

Solution

Most of those characters take more than a byte to encode, but std::cout's currently imbued locale will only output ASCII characters. For that reason you're probably seeing a lot of weird symbols or question marks in the output stream. You should imbue std::wcout with a locale that uses UTF-8 since these characters are not supported by ASCII:

// <locale> is required for this code.

std::locale::global(std::locale("en_US.utf8"));
std::wcout.imbue(std::locale());

std::wstring s = L"šđč枊ĐČĆŽ";
std::wcout << s;

For Windows systems you will need the following code:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <io.h>

int main()
{      
    _setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_WTEXT);

    std::wstring s = L"šđč枊ĐČĆŽ";
    std::wcout << s;

    return 0;
}