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C++ Cookbook
book

C++ Cookbook

by D. Ryan Stephens, Christopher Diggins, Jonathan Turkanis, Jeff Cogswell
November 2005
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
594 pages
16h 23m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from C++ Cookbook

13.1. Hardcoding a Unicode String

Problem

You have to hardcode a Unicode, i.e., wide-character, string in a source file.

Solution

Do this by hardcoding the string with a prefix of L and typing the character into your source editor as you would any other string, or use the hexadecimal number that represents the Unicode character you’re after. Example 13-1 shows how to do it both ways.

Example 13-1. Hardcoding a Unicode string

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

int main() {

   // Create some strings with Unicode characters
   wstring ws1 = L"Infinity: \u221E";
   wstring ws2 = L"Euro: _";

   wchar_t w[] = L"Infinity: \u221E";

   wofstream out("tmp\\unicode.txt");
   out << ws2 << endl;
   wcout << ws2 << endl;
}

Discussion

Hardcoding a Unicode string is mostly a matter of deciding how you want to enter the string in your source editor. C++ provides a wide-character type, wchar_t, which can store Unicode strings. The exact implementation of wchar_t is implementation defined, but it is often UTF-32. The class wstring, defined in <string>, is a sequence of wchar_ts, just like the string class is a sequence of chars. (Strictly speaking, of course, wstring is a typedef for basic_string<wchar_t>).

The easiest way to enter Unicode characters is to use the L prefix to a string literal, as in Example 13-1:

wstring ws1 = L"Infinity: \u2210";  // Use the code itself
wstring ws2 = L"Euro: _";           // Or just type it in

Now, you can write these wide-character strings to a wide-character ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596007612Supplemental ContentErrata Page