PHP: echo'ing UTF-8 characters into Windows command line

Question

I've ran into a problem, but can't tell whether it is PHP or Windows' command line. When a PHP script tries to echo UTF-8 characters into cmd with UTF-8 codepage loaded, the process stops unexpectedly. Here is a case:

test1.php:

<?php
error_reporting( -1 );
echo 'АБВГДЕЁЖЗИЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЫЭЮЯ', "\n";
echo "OK";
?>

test2.php:

<?php
error_reporting( -1 );    
echo 'ASCII: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ', "\n";
echo 'UTF-8: АБВГДЕЁЖЗИЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЫЭЮЯ', "\n";
echo 'UTF-8: АБВГДЕЁЖЗИЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЫЭЮЯ', "\n";
echo "OK";
?>

(Both test1.php and test2.php are saved in UTF-8 without BOM.)

The command prompt log:

e:\tests>chcp 1252
Active code page: 1252

e:\tests>php -f test1.php
АБВГДЕЁЖЗРЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЫЭЮЯ
OK
e:\tests>php -f test2.php
ASCII: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
UTF-8: АБВГДЕЁЖЗРЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЫЭЮЯ
UTF-8: АБВГДЕЁЖЗРЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЫЭЮЯ
OK
e:\tests>chcp 65001
Active code page: 65001

e:\tests>php -f test1.php

e:\tests>php -f test2.php
ASCII: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
UTF-8: АБВГДЕЁЖЗИЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЫЭЮЯ
e:\tests>

While in 1252 mode, all characters get echoed (although not correctly, of course). But in 65001 (UTF-8) mode test1 stalls on the very first character while test2 stalls on the first one of the second UTF-8 row.

PHP version is:

PHP 5.4.13 (cli) (built: Mar 15 2013 02:07:14)
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies

Windows is XP SP3.

Update:

1) If I change echo to:

$f = fopen( 'php://stdout', 'w' );
fwrite( $f, ... );
...
close( $f );

it works.

2) If I redirect the output:

e:\tests>php -f test1.php > out.log

it also works (with echo ).

But what is wrong with the first case?

Answer 1

For windows cyrillic this helps me (windows 7 git bash console):

$text = "Юра";
echo iconv("utf-8", "cp866", $text)

Answer 2

You need to change the font as well.

Right click the title bar of "Command Prompt", click "Properties" and select a TTF font rather than "Raster Fonts".

Answer 3

Try this. I hope it will work:

shell_exec('chcp 866');
echo iconv('utf-8', 'cp866', $message);

Or use this improved helper:

class ConsoleHelper
{
    /**
     * @var boolean
     */
    private static $isEncodingSet = false;

    /**
     * @param string $message
     * @return string
     */
    public static function encodeMessage($message)
    {
        $isWindows = (DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR == '\\');
        if ($isWindows) {
            if ( ! self::$isEncodingSet) {
                shell_exec('chcp 866');
                self::$isEncodingSet = true;
            }
            $message = iconv('utf-8', 'cp866', $message);
        }
        return $message;
    }
}

Answer 4

Grigson's response is great!

Suggestion: Create a wrapper function for echo , to just receive text that can contain non-ASCII characters and display them correctly. Something like:

<?php

function eecho($texto){
    echo iconv("utf-8", "cp850", $texto);
}

$texto = "Aviação!";

echo $texto;
echo PHP_EOL;
eecho($texto);
echo PHP_EOL;

Then you can simply replace echo "Your text ..."; by eecho ('Your text ...');

Save your PHP file as UTF-8 (without BOM). To find out what is your operating system's correct value for the second argument, just type chcp at the command prompt, then your current value will be displayed.