Character literals incorrectly interpreted

[DL1]

On my system, outputting a character constant such as 'ä' or 'ö' to screen will result in an incorrect character being output (or an incorrect decimal value if %d is used in printf). Output of the character constants to disc file will result in a correct character output but an incorrect decimal output.

Incorrect output also results when such characters are read from a disk file to an integer variable and that variable is then output as a decimal value or as a character. However, if the characters are read in from the keyboard to a variable they are interpreted correctly.


The problem happens with both Code::Blocks and VC++ 2008 (English-language software on a non-English-language system).

Any suggestions?

[ssharish2005]

I suspect that this problem can be more likely to be down to the drivers rather than to be your compiler it self. Not really sure, try reinstall or update youre display drivers. See if that any help?

-ssharish

[DL1]

But generally the computer behaves fine. And if I run something like
for (i = 0; i < 256; i++) printf(%d, %c); the output is entirely as expected too. It's only character constants that something somewhere (presumable in the compilers?) seems to be having difficulty understanding correctly.

[DL1]

That should have been printf("%d, %c\n", i, i), of course.

[ssharish2005]

OK, can you post your const ascii value that youre trying to print. Perhaps yout whole snip of code which includes your constant value init and printing ??

-ssharish

[DL1]

Something like this.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main()
{
    int i, l;
    int j ='ö';
    FILE *fptr;

    /*character constant*/
    printf("integer constant 148\t\t- as decimal: %d\tas character: %c\n", 148, 148);
    printf("int character constant '\x94'\t- as decimal: %d\tas character: %c\n",j, j);

    /*from keyboard*/
    printf("Enter '\x94': ");
    l = getchar();
    printf("Character entered\t\t- as decimal: %d\tas character: %c\n\n",l, l);

    /*writing to and then reading from file*/
    printf("int character constant '\x94' written to file, then read from same file as: ");

    fptr = fopen("file.txt", "w");
    fputc(j, fptr);
    fclose(fptr);

    fptr = fopen("file.txt", "r");
    while ((i = getc(fptr)) != EOF)putchar(i);
    fclose(fptr);
    printf("\n");

    return 0;
}

[ssharish2005]

Well, it seems to be working absolutly fine on my machin. I am using Dev-C++ and here is the output of mine.

integer constant 148            - as decimal: 148       as character: ö
int character constant 'ö'      - as decimal: -10       as character: ÷
Enter 'ö':

-ssharish

[DL1]

Well that is exactly the output I get too. But I don't think it's fine at all: its outputting ö as ÷.

[Ronix]

did you try setting the appropiate locale? Sometimes the console will display an incorrect character even if the character literal is correct

[DL1]

No, I didn't. How would you do that?

[Ronix]

#include <locale.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main()
{
   if(!setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ".1257"))
      {
      fputs("Failed to set locale"\n", stderr);
      abort();
      }
   putc('ö', stdout);
}

The .1257 represents the Baltic codepage which appears to include the ö character. The above code seems to work with Microsoft's CRT; keep in mind however, that locale names aren't standardized and that they are usually different across platforms.

[DL1]

Thanks, I will look into that.