How to Prevent Truncated Unicode Characters in the Windows Console?

Preventing Truncated Unicode Characters on the Windows Console

In attempting to print UTF-8 characters in the Windows console, one may encounter issues where certain characters are truncated or displayed incorrectly. This happens because by default, Windows console functions do not handle non-ASCII characters.

Resolving the Issue

There are several methods to resolve this issue:

1. Using WriteConsoleW API:
This low-level API allows directly writing Unicode data to the console. However, it requires ensuring that the target is indeed a console and, using alternative methods for non-console output.

2. Setting Unicode Output Modes:
Using functions like _setmode() with modes like _O_U16TEXT, one can set the output file descriptor to a Unicode mode. The wide character functions will then output Unicode data correctly to the console. But, non-wide character functions must be avoided afterward.

3. Setting Console Output Codepage to CP_UTF8:
By setting the console output codepage to CP_UTF8, UTF-8 text can be directly printed using the right functions. But, higher-level functions like basic_ostream::operator<<() may not work in this case. Lower-level functions or custom UTF-8-compatible ostream can be employed.

Regarding the Third Method:
Despite setting CP_UTF8, multibyte characters split across multiple console writes get treated as invalid encodings and truncated. This behavior is due to the console API seeing the data only in the context of each write, hence failing to account for incomplete characters.

Workaround:
One potential workaround is to create a custom streambuf subclass that handles Unicode conversion correctly, considering that bytes may come separately and maintaining conversion state.

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