How to initialize and print a std::wstring?

Question

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 ?

Answer 1

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

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