Working with UTF-8 std::string objects in C++

Question

I'm using Visual Studio and C++ on Windows to work with small caps text like ʜᴇʟʟᴏ ꜱᴛᴀᴄᴋᴏᴠᴇʀꜰʟᴏᴡ using e.g. this website. Whenever I read this text from a file or put this text directly into my source code using std::string, the text visualizer in Visual Studio shows it in the wrong encoding, presumably the visualizer uses Windows (ANSI). How can I force Visual Studio to let me work with UTF-8 strings properly?

std::string message_or_file_path = "...";
auto message = message_or_file_path;
// If the file path is valid, read from that file
if (GetFileAttributes(message_or_file_path.c_str()) != INVALID_FILE_ATTRIBUTES
 && GetLastError() != ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
{
 std::ifstream file_stream(message_or_file_path);
 std::string text_file_contents((std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(file_stream)),
 std::istreambuf_iterator<char>());
 message = text_file_contents; // Displayed in wrong encoding
 message = "ʜᴇʟʟᴏ ꜱᴛᴀᴄᴋᴏᴠᴇʀꜰʟᴏᴡ"; // Displayed in wrong encoding
 std::wstring wide_message = L"ʜᴇʟʟᴏ ꜱᴛᴀᴄᴋᴏᴠᴇʀꜰʟᴏᴡ"; // Displayed in correct encoding
}

I tried the additional command line option /utf-8 for compiling and setting the locale:

std::locale::global(std::locale(""));
std::cout.imbue(std::locale());

Neither of those fixed the encoding issue.

• Guillaume Racicot: What is the encoding of the .cpp file?
• rustyx: Possible duplicate of How to set standard encoding in Visual Studio
• Remy Lebeau: You should open the std::ifstream in binary mode to avoid any data conversions while reading the chars. That will at least ensure the std::string has the correct bytes. That doesn't mean the IDE will display it correctly, though. Otherwise, use std::wstring instead, as you already discovered. You can read it with a std::wifstream that has a UTF-8 locale imbue()'ed into it. Or read the raw bytes first and then use MultiByteToWideChar() or std::wstring_convert to convert the bytes to std:::wstring

Answer 1

From What’s Wrong with My UTF-8 Strings in Visual Studio?, there are a couple of ways to see the contents of a std::string with UTF-8 encoding.

Let's say you have a variable with the following initialization:

std::string s2 = "\x7a\xc3\x9f\xe6\xb0\xb4\xf0\x9f\x8d\x8c";

Use a Watch window.

• Add the variable to Watch.
• In the Watch window, add ,s8 to the variable name to display its contents as UTF-8.

Here's what I see in Visual Studio 2015.

image

Use the Command Window.

• In the Command Window, use ? &s2[0],s8 to display the text as UTF-8.

Here's what I see in Visual Studio 2015.

image

• BullyWiiPlaza: This may work for the text visualizer but it will not correct the code's encoding so it's only a semi solution. Still, you deserve your upvote.
• R Sahu: @BullyWiiPlaza, what do you mean by the "the code's encoding"?
• BullyWiiPlaza: @R Sahu: I mean during processing of the code the string will not work correctly then. I e.g. copy the unicode text std::string object to the clipboard and when I paste it, it's screwed up. With a std::wstring version it works fine.

Answer 2

A working solution was simply rewriting all std::strings as std::wstrings and adjusting the code logic properly to work with std::wstrings, as indicated in the question as well. Now everything works as expected.