Thread: Printing Russian Characters

First of all, I'm very sorry if there is a thread which completely solves my problem. I did try to use the search utility but I may not have done so properly.

What I am trying to accomplish in C is simple. At least, it sounds simple. All I want to do is output Russian characters. By now I've spent 5 or 6 hours trying to figure out how to do this but so far I've been unsuccessful. I've read the Unicode tutorial several times but, as I'm a bit of a novice, I don't quite understand everything which is being said. Also, it seems to me that that tutorial is focused on updating code to make it Unicode friendly, instead of creating something new which is specifically geared towards manipulating Unicode characters.

I guess what I'll do is post the pathetic bit of code I have written and explain how I arrived at the individual lines.

Code:

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


int main()
{
    wchar_t dest;
    setlocale(LC_ALL, "ru-RU");


    mbrtowc(&dest, "Б", 4, NULL);
    wprintf(L"%Lc\n", dest);


    wprintf(L"Б\n");


    printf("Б\n");
}

1. wchar_t dest;
In the Unicode tutorial, it's recommended not to use this type of variable but I decided to try it anyway since I couldn't get anything else to work.
2. setlocale(LC_ALL, "ru-RU");
From what I understand, I need to include this line because the environment which supports the execution of my code may not otherwise be expecting Russian characters. (Fair enough.) The locale name I'm using may be incorrect. (Does anyone know?)
3. mbrtowc(&dest, "Б", 4, NULL); wprintf(L"%Lc\n", dest);
This is my first attempt at outputting a character. In the first line, I'm trying to convert the symbol into a wide character. As previously mentioned, I am a bit of a novice so I'm not entirely sure whether or not I've filled in the fields properly. I used 4 for the size because I read that UTF-8 can require up to 4 bytes.
4. wprintf(L"Б\n");
My second attempt, without the conversion.
5. printf("Б\n");
My third attempt. I really don't expect this one to work but I've included it anyway.

Hopefully someone can tell me what it is I'm doing wrong and steer me in the right direction. I'd really like to learn how to properly use Unicode in my programming but I fear I've already spent too many hours in the pursuit...

By the way, I'm using Windows 7.

I don't have any experience with setlocale() or wchar, but I think it has to do with the font that's loaded - that's used to display the characters.

Originally Posted by nonoob

I don't have any experience with setlocale() or wchar, but I think it has to do with the font that's loaded - that's used to display the characters.

That was one of the issues I read about when I was searching for a solution, but I think I've eliminated that particular problem by changing the font in the console from "Raster Fonts" to "Lucida Console". However, I could be wrong...

Originally Posted by c99tutorial

Try to run your program in the following way:

myprogram > myoutput.txt

And then open myoutput.txt in a text editor. Does it display properly? If yes, then the problem is related to the terminal, not your program.

Thanks for the suggestion. Your reasoning makes sense. Unfortunately I can only print the characters to a file in the most primitive way. In other words, it only works if I use the line

fprintf(filePointer, "Б\n");

If, however, I try to maintain an array of characters (which I will eventually want to do), it doesn't work. Here's my code:

Code:

    FILE *filePointer;
    wchar_t alpha[1];


    filePointer = fopen("test.txt", "w");
    setlocale(LC_ALL, "ru-RU");


    mbrtowc(&alpha[0], "Б", 4, NULL);
    fprintf(filePointer, L"%Lc\n", alpha[0]);


    fclose(filePointer);

Originally Posted by Codeplug

Non-English characters with cout
That covers some of the things you should know.

I could be wrong (and I probably am) but isn't cout an object in C++? If so, I don't think I can use it in a C program.

Originally Posted by Codeplug

>> but isn't cout an object in C++? If so, I don't think I can use it in a C program.
Correct. That's just the name of the thread I linked to. You'll just want to read post #22.

Thanks for pointing that out to me. Unfortunately, I don't think I can make use of the methods you describe in that post. For instance, I don't think the universal character set can be applied to my problem in the same way. At least, I couldn't get it to work.

Did you try
cmd /U
?
You can enter
help cmd
in command line for getting help.

Originally Posted by Shurik

Did you try
cmd /U
?
You can enter
help cmd
in command line for getting help.

how to get that command line in cmd?
will it useful to c proggraming language?