Output unicode strings in Windows console app

Question

Hi I was trying to output unicode string to a console with iostreams and failed.

I found this: Using unicode font in c++ console app and this snippet works.

SetConsoleOutputCP(CP_UTF8);
wchar_t s[] = L"èéøÞǽлљΣæča";
int bufferSize = WideCharToMultiByte(CP_UTF8, 0, s, -1, NULL, 0, NULL, NULL);
char* m = new char[bufferSize]; 
WideCharToMultiByte(CP_UTF8, 0, s, -1, m, bufferSize, NULL, NULL);
wprintf(L"%S", m);

However, I did not find any way to output unicode correctly with iostreams. Any suggestions?

This does not work:

SetConsoleOutputCP(CP_UTF8);
utf8_locale = locale(old_locale,new boost::program_options::detail::utf8_codecvt_facet());
wcout.imbue(utf8_locale);
wcout << L"¡Hola!" << endl;

EDIT I could not find any other solution than to wrap this snippet around in a stream. Hope, somebody has better ideas.

//Unicode output for a Windows console 
ostream &operator-(ostream &stream, const wchar_t *s) 
{ 
    int bufSize = WideCharToMultiByte(CP_UTF8, 0, s, -1, NULL, 0, NULL, NULL);
    char *buf = new char[bufSize];
    WideCharToMultiByte(CP_UTF8, 0, s, -1, buf, bufSize, NULL, NULL);
    wprintf(L"%S", buf);
    delete[] buf; 
    return stream; 
} 

ostream &operator-(ostream &stream, const wstring &s) 
{ 
    stream - s.c_str();
    return stream; 
} 

Answer 1

I have verified a solution here using Visual Studio 2010. Via this MSDN article and MSDN blog post. The trick is an obscure call to _setmode(..., _O_U16TEXT).

Solution:

#include <iostream>
#include <io.h>
#include <fcntl.h>

int wmain(int argc, wchar_t* argv[])
{
    _setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_U16TEXT);
    std::wcout << L"Testing unicode -- English -- Ελληνικά -- Español." << std::endl;
}

Screenshot: