How to initialize and print a std::wstring?

Question

I had the code:

std::string st = "SomeText";
...
std::cout << st;

and that worked fine. But now my team wants to move to wstring. So I tried:

std::wstring st = "SomeText";
...
std::cout << st;

but this gave me a compilation error:

Error 1 error C2664: 'std::basic_string<_Elem,_Traits,_Ax>::basic_string(const std::basic_string<_Elem,_Traits,_Ax> &)' : cannot convert parameter 1 from 'const char [8]' to 'const std::basic_string<_Elem,_Traits,_Ax> &' D:...\TestModule1.cpp 28 1 TestModule1

After searching the web I read that I should define it as:

std::wstring st = L"SomeText"; // Notice the "L"
...
std::cout << st;

this compiled but prints "0000000000012342" instead of "SomeText".

What am I doing wrong ?

Corcovado

Consider using ICU unicode library - link. It supports unicode and has many usefull features. especially if you want to manipulate those strings. – Babism

@Weasel: Why in the world would you need a separate library to work with Unicode strings? – Dru

from my experience its much better to use a separate library to manipulate wchar strings (search, replace etc) or other multi-byte strings. – Babism

Thanks, but I just needed to use wcout instead of cout (-: – Corcovado

Answer 1

To display a wstring you also need a wide version of cout - wcout.

std::wstring st = L"SomeText";
...
std::wcout << st; 

Eau

Answer 2

Use std::wcout instead of std::cout.

Sororate

Answer 3

This answer apply to "C++/CLI" tag, and related Windows C++ console.

If you got multi-bytes characters in std::wstring, two more things need to be done to make it work:

1. Include headers
   #include <io.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
2. Set stdout mode
   _setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT)

Result:

Nicholasnichole

Thank you very much! It would have taken me a long time to figure this out... I was having trouble printing a wstring that I instantiated with a greater length than the data I was supplying due to sizeof(wchar_t) == sizeof(char) * 2, and then printing anything after that wasn't succeeding. Your answer fixed the multi-byte printing problem so I could determine what was going on. – Alcaide

Answer 4

try to use use std::wcout<<st it will fix your problem.

std::wstring st = "SomeText";
...
std::wcout << st;

Cloudcapped

Answer 5

Another way to print wide string:

std::wstring str1 = L"SomeText";
std::wstring strr2(L"OtherText!");

printf("Wide String1- %ls \n", str1.c_str());
wprintf(L"Wide String2- %s \n", str2.c_str());

• For printf: %s is narrow char string and %ls is wide char string.
• For wprintf: %hs is narrow char string and %s is wide char string.

Jerrelljerri