Dealing with UTF-8 Strings in C on Windows

Encoding strings as UTF-8 is widely used for cross-platform applications. However, outputting UTF-8 strings to std::cout on Windows presents unique challenges.

The default behavior on Windows is for std::cout to expect strings in non-Unicode formats. When presented with UTF-8 strings, it displays corrupted characters.

To address this issue, there are two primary steps:

1. Set Console Code Page to UTF-8: Using the SetConsoleOutputCP function, inform the console that the incoming byte stream is UTF-8 encoded.
2. Enable Stream Buffering: Disable the default behavior of std::basic_filebuf in Visual Studio, which breaks down UTF-8 byte sequences and passes them as individual bytes. To overcome this, setvbuf enables stream buffering, ensuring the entire string is passed through as a whole.

Here's a revised code snippet that incorporates these solutions:

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

int main() {
    // Set console code page to UTF-8
    SetConsoleOutputCP(CP_UTF8);

    // Enable buffering to prevent byte-by-byte transmission
    setvbuf(stdout, nullptr, _IOFBF, 1000);

    // Output UTF-8 string
    std::string test = u8"Greek: αβγδ; German: Übergrößenträger";
    std::cout 
In addition to these steps, note that raster fonts in the Windows console may not display non-ASCII Unicode characters correctly. To enable proper rendering, it's recommended to switch to a TrueType font, which is now the default in Windows 10 and later versions.