Printing UTF-8 from C Console Applications on Windows

When developing C console applications on English Windows systems using Visual Studio 2008, users may encounter challenges in displaying UTF-8 encoded content correctly through cout or wcout. Here's how to overcome this issue:

Solution:

The solution involves setting the console's output code page to support UTF-8. Follow these steps:

1. Include and header files.
2. Use the #pragma execution_character_set directive to set the execution character set to UTF-8.
3. In the main function, call SetConsoleOutputCP(65001) to change the output code page to UTF-8.
4. Utilize printf to output UTF-8 encoded text.

Code Example:

#include 
#include 

#pragma execution_character_set("utf-8")

int main()
{
    SetConsoleOutputCP(65001);
    printf("Testing unicode -- English -- Ελληνικά -- Español -- Русский. aäbcdefghijklmnoöpqrsßtuüvwxyz\n");
}

Additional Tips:

• Save the source file as Unicode (UTF-8 with signature) - Codepage 65001.
• Set Project -> Properties -> Configuration Properties -> General -> Character Set to Use Unicode Character Set.
• While changing the console font to Lucida Console may be suggested, it is not necessary for proper display in this case.