'How to initialize and print a std::wstring?

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 ?

c++c++-cliwstring


Solution 1:[1]

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

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

Solution 2:[2]

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

Solution 3:[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: Multi-bytes console

Solution 4:[4]

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

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

Solution 5:[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.

Solution 6:[6]

In addition to what is said above, there are octal and hexadecimal character encodings

std::wstring blankHex = L"\x0020";
std::wstring blankOct= L"\040";

String and character literals (C++)

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 Bo Persson
Solution 2 hmjd
Solution 3
Solution 4 Hemant Metalia
Solution 5 Nikita Jain
Solution 6 Sam Ginrich

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