Writing utf16 to file in binary mode
10,219
Solution 1
I suspect that sizeof(wchar_t) is 4 in your environment - i.e. it's writing out UTF-32/UCS-4 instead of UTF-16. That's certainly what the hex dump looks like.
That's easy enough to test (just print out sizeof(wchar_t)) but I'm pretty sure it's what's going on.
To go from a UTF-32 wstring to UTF-16 you'll need to apply a proper encoding, as surrogate pairs come into play.
Solution 2
Here we run into the little used locale properties. If you output your string as a string (rather than raw data) you can get the locale to do the appropriate conversion auto-magically.
N.B.This code does not take into account edianness of the wchar_t character.
#include <locale>
#include <fstream>
#include <iostream>
// See Below for the facet
#include "UTF16Facet.h"
int main(int argc,char* argv[])
{
// construct a custom unicode facet and add it to a local.
UTF16Facet *unicodeFacet = new UTF16Facet();
const std::locale unicodeLocale(std::cout.getloc(), unicodeFacet);
// Create a stream and imbue it with the facet
std::wofstream saveFile;
saveFile.imbue(unicodeLocale);
// Now the stream is imbued we can open it.
// NB If you open the file stream first. Any attempt to imbue it with a local will silently fail.
saveFile.open("output.uni");
saveFile << L"This is my Data\n";
return(0);
}
The File: UTF16Facet.h
#include <locale>
class UTF16Facet: public std::codecvt<wchar_t,char,std::char_traits<wchar_t>::state_type>
{
typedef std::codecvt<wchar_t,char,std::char_traits<wchar_t>::state_type> MyType;
typedef MyType::state_type state_type;
typedef MyType::result result;
/* This function deals with converting data from the input stream into the internal stream.*/
/*
* from, from_end: Points to the beginning and end of the input that we are converting 'from'.
* to, to_limit: Points to where we are writing the conversion 'to'
* from_next: When the function exits this should have been updated to point at the next location
* to read from. (ie the first unconverted input character)
* to_next: When the function exits this should have been updated to point at the next location
* to write to.
*
* status: This indicates the status of the conversion.
* possible values are:
* error: An error occurred the bad file bit will be set.
* ok: Everything went to plan
* partial: Not enough input data was supplied to complete any conversion.
* nonconv: no conversion was done.
*/
virtual result do_in(state_type &s,
const char *from,const char *from_end,const char* &from_next,
wchar_t *to, wchar_t *to_limit,wchar_t* &to_next) const
{
// Loop over both the input and output array/
for(;(from < from_end) && (to < to_limit);from += 2,++to)
{
/*Input the Data*/
/* As the input 16 bits may not fill the wchar_t object
* Initialise it so that zero out all its bit's. This
* is important on systems with 32bit wchar_t objects.
*/
(*to) = L'\0';
/* Next read the data from the input stream into
* wchar_t object. Remember that we need to copy
* into the bottom 16 bits no matter what size the
* the wchar_t object is.
*/
reinterpret_cast<char*>(to)[0] = from[0];
reinterpret_cast<char*>(to)[1] = from[1];
}
from_next = from;
to_next = to;
return((from > from_end)?partial:ok);
}
/* This function deals with converting data from the internal stream to a C/C++ file stream.*/
/*
* from, from_end: Points to the beginning and end of the input that we are converting 'from'.
* to, to_limit: Points to where we are writing the conversion 'to'
* from_next: When the function exits this should have been updated to point at the next location
* to read from. (ie the first unconverted input character)
* to_next: When the function exits this should have been updated to point at the next location
* to write to.
*
* status: This indicates the status of the conversion.
* possible values are:
* error: An error occurred the bad file bit will be set.
* ok: Everything went to plan
* partial: Not enough input data was supplied to complete any conversion.
* nonconv: no conversion was done.
*/
virtual result do_out(state_type &state,
const wchar_t *from, const wchar_t *from_end, const wchar_t* &from_next,
char *to, char *to_limit, char* &to_next) const
{
for(;(from < from_end) && (to < to_limit);++from,to += 2)
{
/* Output the Data */
/* NB I am assuming the characters are encoded as UTF-16.
* This means they are 16 bits inside a wchar_t object.
* As the size of wchar_t varies between platforms I need
* to take this into consideration and only take the bottom
* 16 bits of each wchar_t object.
*/
to[0] = reinterpret_cast<const char*>(from)[0];
to[1] = reinterpret_cast<const char*>(from)[1];
}
from_next = from;
to_next = to;
return((to > to_limit)?partial:ok);
}
};
Solution 3
It is easy if you use the C++11 standard (because there are a lot of additional includes like "utf8" which solves this problems forever).
But if you want to use multi-platform code with older standards, you can use this method to write with streams:
- Read the article about UTF converter for streams
- Add
stxutif.hto your project from sources above -
Open the file in ANSI mode and add the BOM to the start of a file, like this:
std::ofstream fs; fs.open(filepath, std::ios::out|std::ios::binary); unsigned char smarker[3]; smarker[0] = 0xEF; smarker[1] = 0xBB; smarker[2] = 0xBF; fs << smarker; fs.close(); -
Then open the file as
UTFand write your content there:std::wofstream fs; fs.open(filepath, std::ios::out|std::ios::app); std::locale utf8_locale(std::locale(), new utf8cvt<false>); fs.imbue(utf8_locale); fs << .. // Write anything you want...
Solution 4
The provided Utf16Facet didn't work in gcc for big strings, here is the version that worked for me... This way the file will be saved in UTF-16LE. For UTF-16BE, simply invert the assignments in do_in and do_out, e.g. to[0] = from[1] and to[1] = from[0]
#include <locale>
#include <bits/codecvt.h>
class UTF16Facet: public std::codecvt<wchar_t,char,std::char_traits<wchar_t>::state_type>
{
typedef std::codecvt<wchar_t,char,std::char_traits<wchar_t>::state_type> MyType;
typedef MyType::state_type state_type;
typedef MyType::result result;
/* This function deals with converting data from the input stream into the internal stream.*/
/*
* from, from_end: Points to the beginning and end of the input that we are converting 'from'.
* to, to_limit: Points to where we are writing the conversion 'to'
* from_next: When the function exits this should have been updated to point at the next location
* to read from. (ie the first unconverted input character)
* to_next: When the function exits this should have been updated to point at the next location
* to write to.
*
* status: This indicates the status of the conversion.
* possible values are:
* error: An error occurred the bad file bit will be set.
* ok: Everything went to plan
* partial: Not enough input data was supplied to complete any conversion.
* nonconv: no conversion was done.
*/
virtual result do_in(state_type &s,
const char *from,const char *from_end,const char* &from_next,
wchar_t *to, wchar_t *to_limit,wchar_t* &to_next) const
{
for(;from < from_end;from += 2,++to)
{
if(to<=to_limit){
(*to) = L'\0';
reinterpret_cast<char*>(to)[0] = from[0];
reinterpret_cast<char*>(to)[1] = from[1];
from_next = from;
to_next = to;
}
}
return((to != to_limit)?partial:ok);
}
/* This function deals with converting data from the internal stream to a C/C++ file stream.*/
/*
* from, from_end: Points to the beginning and end of the input that we are converting 'from'.
* to, to_limit: Points to where we are writing the conversion 'to'
* from_next: When the function exits this should have been updated to point at the next location
* to read from. (ie the first unconverted input character)
* to_next: When the function exits this should have been updated to point at the next location
* to write to.
*
* status: This indicates the status of the conversion.
* possible values are:
* error: An error occurred the bad file bit will be set.
* ok: Everything went to plan
* partial: Not enough input data was supplied to complete any conversion.
* nonconv: no conversion was done.
*/
virtual result do_out(state_type &state,
const wchar_t *from, const wchar_t *from_end, const wchar_t* &from_next,
char *to, char *to_limit, char* &to_next) const
{
for(;(from < from_end);++from, to += 2)
{
if(to <= to_limit){
to[0] = reinterpret_cast<const char*>(from)[0];
to[1] = reinterpret_cast<const char*>(from)[1];
from_next = from;
to_next = to;
}
}
return((to != to_limit)?partial:ok);
}
};
Author by
Cactuar
Updated on July 11, 2022Comments
-
Cactuar almost 2 years
I'm trying to write a wstring to file with ofstream in binary mode, but I think I'm doing something wrong. This is what I've tried:
ofstream outFile("test.txt", std::ios::out | std::ios::binary); wstring hello = L"hello"; outFile.write((char *) hello.c_str(), hello.length() * sizeof(wchar_t)); outFile.close();Opening test.txt in for example Firefox with encoding set to UTF16 it will show as:
h�e�l�l�o�
Could anyone tell me why this happens?
EDIT:
Opening the file in a hex editor I get:
FF FE 68 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 6C 00 00 00 6C 00 00 00 6F 00 00 00Looks like I get two extra bytes in between every character for some reason?
-
Cactuar over 15 yearsYeah, you are correct wchar_t is of size 4, I'm in a mac. So that explains a lot :) I'm aware of the surrogate pairs in UTF-16, will have to look into that a bit more.
-
Martin York over 15 yearsFrom the output you can not tell it it is UTF-16 or UTF-32 all it shows is that wchar_t is 4 bytes wide. The encoding of the string is not defined by the language (though it is most likely to be UCS-4). -
Jakob Riedle about 7 yearsNote, that your Facet implements the conversion to/from UCS-2, not UTF-16. UTF-16 is a variable length encoding that instruments so called surrogate pairs. UCS-2 is a subset of Unicode, which is the reason UTF-16 has been invented.
