Displaying Special Characters in C++

[Ben Brown]

Does anyone know how to output special characters in C++ (to the console)? For example, ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ (the four card suit symbols) . I am hoping for a very simple way to do this. If it helps, my IDE is NetBeans 7.0.1/7.1 with Cygwin.

Thanks

[Moschops]

Give this a go.

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
   const char heart[] = "\xe2\x99\xa5";
   std::cout << heart << '\n';
}

If it works, you'll need to look up the codes for other symbols you want (or experiment; start by changing that 5).

[Ben Brown]

No...it gave me the following output:

♥

...so I'm not really sure what's going on. Any help is still much appreciated though, so anyone who knows how to fix this, please help. Just FYI, my OS is Windows, which I think makes a difference.

[Twist177]

try this:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main ()
{
    char heart = 3;             //get yourself an IBM ASCII chart for them all
    cout << heart << endl;//make sure it has the heart on it, because if it 
    system("pause");        //doesn't, it isn't accurate
}

I'd reccomend using google images to get a chart. MAKE SURE #3 is a heart, or it isn't accurate

[coder777]

what comes out depends on the code page that's currently active. In the linux world there's often UTF-8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page


Edit: under windows it's 850:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_850

[Ben Brown]

I really appreciate the help and links, but I cannot seem to figure it out. I would really appreciate it if someone could give a specific example so I can see how to do this. Thanks!

[viliml]

const char* signs="\3\4\5\6";
That gives you, in order, a heart, a diamond, a spade and a club, if I remember their names correctly.

[Ben Brown]

Why I try that, nothing is outputted (or maybe just whitespace). I'm really not sure what is going on.

[coder777]

Unfortunately the code page 850 doesn't contain the the symbols you want.

Are you able to access the win api?

SetConsoleOutputCP is the way to change the codepage. Look at this:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms686036%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

You need to find a code page that contains those symbols. UTF-8 would be the best if possible.

[Ben Brown]

Unfortunately, WinAPI confuses me too much to effectively use it. I am still searching, but to no avail. Thanks for all the help though!

[Cubbi]

Can't you guys just use std::wcout << L"\u2660\u2665\u2666\u2663"? All this codepage business is so 1990s.

(on windows, to configure the console for wide char output, do _setmode(_fileno(stdout), _O_WTEXT); )

[coder777]

You might want to take a look at ncurses:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/

[candyfreak]

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
	char a[4] = {3,4,5,6};

	cout<<"Heart: "<<a[0]<<endl;
	cout<<"Club: "<<a[1]<<endl;
	cout<<"Diamond: "<<a[2]<<endl;
	cout<<"Spade: "<<a[3]<<endl;

	system("PAUSE");
	return 0;
}

[Ben Brown]

Sorry, but nothing has worked so far. Thanks for the help though :)

[Ben Brown]

Well, I'm using the Allegro graphics library now, so that is probably just going to work better than anything else. If anybody knows how to do it through the console, please feel free to tell me. Thanks for all the help!