HEX value to wchar_t character (UTF-8) conversion

Question

I am holding hex values in unsigned integers size_t and would like to convert them into wchar_t to hold in a data-structure and, optionally print to std::cout as it's UTF-8 symbol/character when valid.

I've tried casting without much success: size_t h = 0x262E; prints 9774 when doing a cast to wchar_t for example.

Some minimal code:

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>

int main() {
   std::setlocale( LC_ALL, "" );
   auto v = std::vector<size_t>( 3, 0x262E ); // 3x peace symbols
   v.at( 1 ) += 0x10; // now a moon symbol

   for( auto &el : v )
       std::cout << el << " ";

    return 0;
}

Output: 9774 9790 9774 What I want: ☮ ☾ ☮

I can print the symbols using printf( "%lc ", (wchar_t) el ); . Is there a better "modern" C++ solution to this?

I need to be able to print anything in the range of 0000-27BF UTF-8 on linux only .

Answer 1

You need std::wcout with wchar_t cast to print the wide characters instead of std::cout .

Here's your corrected functional code ( live example ):

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>

int main() {
   std::setlocale( LC_ALL, "" );
   auto v = std::vector<size_t>( 3, 0x262E ); // 3x peace symbols
   v.at( 1 ) += 0x10; // now a moon symbol

   for( auto &el : v )
       std::wcout << (wchar_t) el << " "; // <--- Corrected statement

    return 0;
}

Output:

☮ ☾ ☮

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In case you have hex string numbers, you can follow this solution.