[Mingw-users] wide character support

[Andreas B. <be...@im...>]

I have played a bit with wide characters under MinGW and got the 
following results (gcc 3.4.0, mingw runtime 3.3):

(A) There seems to be at least partial support for wchar with plain C,
     e.g. the following works:

-- file begin --
#include <stdio.h>

int
main(char *argv[], int argc) {
	wprintf(L"hello world\n");
	return 0;
}
-- file end --

(B) In C++ there seems to be no support for wide characters, i.e. the
   following *does not* work, because neither wstring nor wcout
   are defined:

-- file begin --
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int
main(char *argv[], int argc) {
     wstring ws = wstring("hello world");
     wcout << ws << endl;
     return 0;
}
-- file end --

I have tried to re-compile libstdc++, which was quite difficult. When 
using it, I am getting the following linker errors:

$ g++ wctest.cpp
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(ctype_members.o)(.text+0x3ee):ctype_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `wctype'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(ctype_members.o)(.text+0x403):ctype_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `wctype'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(ctype_members.o)(.text+0x418):ctype_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `wctype'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(ctype_members.o)(.text+0x42d):ctype_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `wctype'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(ctype_members.o)(.text+0x442):ctype_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `wctype'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(ctype_members.o)(.text+0x454):ctype_members.cc: 
more undefined references to `wctype' follow
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(ctype_members.o)(.text+0x788):ctype_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `wctob'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(ctype_members.o)(.text+0x7fb):ctype_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `wctob'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(ctype_members.o)(.text+0x845):ctype_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `wctob'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(ctype_members.o)(.text+0x89f):ctype_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `wctob'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(ctype_members.o)(.text+0x8fc):ctype_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `btowc'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(numeric_members.o)(.text+0x66b):numeric_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `btowc'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(numeric_members.o)(.text+0x6b3):numeric_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `btowc'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(monetary_members.o)(.text+0xb1c):monetary_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `btowc'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(monetary_members.o)(.text+0xcd6):monetary_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `btowc'
/mingw/lib/libstdc++.a(codecvt_members.o)(.text+0x15f):codecvt_members.cc: 
undefined reference to `wcrtomb'
[... and so on ..]

This is pretty strange, because configure found out that 'btowc' and 
'wcrtomb' are not available. This is from my "config.log":

[...]
ac_cv_func_btowc=no   # <-- !!
ac_cv_func_copysignf=yes
ac_cv_func_fgetwc=yes
ac_cv_func_fgetws=yes
ac_cv_func_fputwc=yes
ac_cv_func_fputws=yes
[...]
ac_cv_func_getwc=yes
ac_cv_func_getwchar=yes
ac_cv_func_iconv=no
ac_cv_func_iconv_close=no
ac_cv_func_iconv_open=no
ac_cv_func_iswblank=no
ac_cv_func_mbrlen=no
ac_cv_func_mbrtowc=no
ac_cv_func_mbsinit=yes
ac_cv_func_mbsrtowcs=no
ac_cv_func_nl_langinfo=no
[...]
ac_cv_func_vwprintf=yes
ac_cv_func_vwscanf=yes
ac_cv_func_wcrtomb=no  # <-- !!
ac_cv_func_wctob=no    # <-- !!
[...]

Yes, I have taken a look into "gcc-3.4.0-build.sh" and I adopted the 
configure flags that seemed to be applicable to libstdc++.

PLEASE, PLEASE: I would need further advice! How can I use wide 
characters with C++?


Thanks,
	Andreas