How do I widen a char in c++

Question

I'm writing a game in c++ using SFML, I found a font that support French characters. However, in the program I read all the text from files to be able to support different languages, but I don't know how to extract the text without errors into a wide strings.

Here's my code:

using namespace std;
using namespace sf;

void SettingsW :: initialize()
{

// using normal characters it reads the files correctly

    wifstream settTextFile;
    settTextFile.open(pageTextSource);
    wstring temp;

    getline(settTextFile, temp);
    pageTitle.setFont(pageFont);
    pageTitle.setString(temp);

    getline(settTextFile, temp, L' ');
    languageTitle.setFont(pageFont);
    languageTitle.setString(temp);

//here is the problem
    char g=' ';
    ios::widen(g);
    getline(settTextFile, temp, ' '));  
// I want to use get line with this delimiter and when I use the L the error goes away 
//but it doesn't display properly: é is displayed as ã
}

Answer 1

It's not too clear what your problem is. The code you present shouldn't compile; ios::widen is a member function, and can only be called on an ios (which is a typedef for std::basic_ios<char>, of which you have no instance in your code). Also, ios::widen returns the widened character, except that ios::widen (as opposed to std::basic_ios<wchar_t>::widen) doesn't widen, since it returns achar. If you want to use the character ingthe delimiter in the last call tostd::getline`, then you could use:

std::getline( settTextFile, tmp, settTextFile.widen( g ) );

(Of course, you should verify that std::getline succeeded before using the value it read.)

With regards to the “it doesn't display properly”: you'll have to give more information with regards to how you are displaying it for us to be sure, but it seems likely to me that you just haven't imbued your output stream with the same encoding as the code page of the window (supposing Windows), or with the encoding of the font used in the window (supposing Unix). But you'll have to show us exactly what you're displaying, how you're displaying it, and give us some information about the environment if you want a complete answer.