How to output Unicode characters from hex string in C++?

Question

I have a string called str containing the hex code 265A and I would like to output it as a Unicode character, which should be the black chess king.

So these are the ways I have already tried:

std::string str = "\u" + str;
std::cout << str;

but this gives me the error

error: incomplete universal character name \u

Doing

std::cout << "\u" << str;

also didn't work, for the same reason.

So I tried using wchar_t like this:

wchar_t wc = strtol(str.c_str(), NULL, 16);
std::wcout << wc;

but that just didn't output anything.

So I really don't know what else to do.

The first two don't work because \u is a compile-time operation, not a runtime operation. You need to provide more information on what happens in the third case. What is the value of wc? Is it possible that your wcout simply doesn't support that character? — Raymond Chen
– Raymond Chen, Commented Apr 25, 2016 at 14:15
Huh, I have not thought aout that. I tried encoding with UTF8 now and in Windows I just get weird characters when doing std::cout << "\u265A", namely â™š. I'll have to read a bit into this. But some encoding that works on Windows. @Biffen — Post Self
– Post Self, Commented Apr 25, 2016 at 14:16
Well, the problem is, that I don't know any other way of checking the value of wc, other that std::wcout, but the documentation of strtol suggests it should do what it is supposed to do. Also what do you mean, by not able to output? 265A is pretty high up, so that might be a possibility, but how do I bypass it? @RaymondChen — Post Self
– Post Self, Commented Apr 25, 2016 at 14:20
@kim366 What are you talking about? Back then you didn't even know what a debugger was.. — Post Self
– Post Self, Commented Aug 14, 2017 at 17:17

Toby Speight · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-25 14:57:35Z

1

Your strtol approach is about right. The following test program tests that you can create an A this way:

#include <string>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    const std::string str = "41";

    wchar_t wc = std::strtol(str.c_str(), NULL, 16);
    std::wcout << wc << std::endl;
}

You're likely having problems with the output side of things, or your system's wchar_t is some non-Unicode type - you can demonstrate that with something like

std::wcout << wchar_t(65) << wchar_t(0x265A) << std::endl;

answered Apr 25, 2016 at 14:57

Toby Speight

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