I've been forcing the usage of chcp 65001 in Command Prompt and Windows Powershell for some time now, but judging by Q&A posts on SO and several other communities it seems like a dangerous and inefficient solution. Does Microsoft provide an improved / complete alternative to chcp 65001 that can be saved permanently without manual alteration of the Registry? And if there isn't, is there a publicly announced timeline or agenda to support UTF-8 in the Windows CLI in the future?
Personally I've been using chcp 949 for Korean Character Support, but the weird display of the backslash \ and incorrect/incomprehensible displays in several applications (like Neovim), as well as characters that aren't Korean not being supported via 949 seems to become more of a problem lately.
Note:
This answer shows how to switch the character encoding in the Windows console to
(BOM-less) UTF-8 (code page 65001), so that shells such as cmd.exe and PowerShell properly encode and decode characters (text) when communicating with external (console) programs with full Unicode support, and in cmd.exe also for file I/O.[1]
If, by contrast, your concern is about the separate aspect of the limitations of Unicode character rendering in console windows, see the middle and bottom sections of this answer, where alternative console (terminal) applications are discussed too.
Does Microsoft provide an improved / complete alternative to chcp 65001 that can be saved permanently without manual alteration of the Registry?
As of (at least) Windows 10, version 1903, you have the option to set the system locale (language for non-Unicode programs) to UTF-8, but the feature is still in beta as of this writing.
To activate it:
Run intl.cpl (which opens the regional settings in Control Panel)
Follow the instructions in the screen shot below.
This sets both the system's active OEM and the ANSI code page to 65001, the UTF-8 code page, which therefore (a) makes all future console windows, which use the OEM code page, default to UTF-8 (as if chcp 65001 had been executed in a cmd.exe window) and (b) also makes legacy, non-Unicode GUI-subsystem applications, which (among others) use the ANSI code page, use UTF-8.
Caveats:
If you're using Windows PowerShell, this will also make Get-Content and Set-Content and other contexts where Windows PowerShell default so the system's active ANSI code page, notably reading source code from BOM-less files, default to UTF-8 (which PowerShell Core (v6+) always does). This means that, in the absence of an -Encoding argument, BOM-less files that are ANSI-encoded (which is historically common) will then be misread, and files created with Set-Content will be UTF-8 rather than ANSI-encoded.
[Fixed in PowerShell 7.1] Up to at least PowerShell 7.0, a bug in the underlying .NET version (.NET Core 3.1) causes follow-on bugs in PowerShell: a UTF-8 BOM is unexpectedly prepended to data sent to external processes via stdin (irrespective of what you set $OutputEncoding to), which notably breaks Start-Job - see this GitHub issue.
Not all fonts speak Unicode, so pick a TT (TrueType) font, but even they usually support only a subset of all characters, so you may have to experiment with specific fonts to see if all characters you care about are represented - see this answer for details, which also discusses alternative console (terminal) applications that have better Unicode rendering support.
As eryksun points out, legacy console applications that do not "speak" UTF-8 will be limited to ASCII-only input and will produce incorrect output when trying to output characters outside the (7-bit) ASCII range. (In the obsolescent Windows 7 and below, programs may even crash).
If running legacy console applications is important to you, see eryksun's recommendations in the comments.
However, for Windows PowerShell, that is not enough:
You must additionally set the $OutputEncoding preference variable to UTF-8 as well: $OutputEncoding = [System.Text.UTF8Encoding]::new()[2]; it's simplest to add that command to your $PROFILE (current user only) or $PROFILE.AllUsersCurrentHost (all users) file.
Fortunately, this is no longer necessary in PowerShell Core, which internally consistently defaults to BOM-less UTF-8.
If setting the system locale to UTF-8 is not an option in your environment, use startup commands instead:
Note: The caveat re legacy console applications mentioned above equally applies here. If running legacy console applications is important to you, see eryksun's recommendations in the comments.
For PowerShell (both editions), add the following line to your $PROFILE (current user only) or $PROFILE.AllUsersCurrentHost (all users) file, which is the equivalent of chcp 65001, supplemented with setting preference variable $OutputEncoding to instruct PowerShell to send data to external programs via the pipeline in UTF-8:
Note that running chcp 65001 from inside a PowerShell session is not effective, because .NET caches the console's output encoding on startup and is unaware of later changes made with chcp; additionally, as stated, Windows PowerShell requires $OutputEncoding to be set - see this answer for details.
$OutputEncoding = [console]::InputEncoding = [console]::OutputEncoding = New-Object System.Text.UTF8Encoding
For example, here's a quick-and-dirty approach to add this line to $PROFILE programmatically:
'$OutputEncoding = [console]::InputEncoding = [console]::OutputEncoding = New-Object System.Text.UTF8Encoding' + [Environment]::Newline + (Get-Content -Raw $PROFILE -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) | Set-Content -Encoding utf8 $PROFILE
For cmd.exe, define an auto-run command via the registry, in value AutoRun of key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor (current user only) or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor (all users):
For instance, you can use PowerShell to create this value for you:
# Auto-execute `chcp 65001` whenever the current user opens a `cmd.exe` console
# window (including when running a batch file):
Set-ItemProperty 'HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor' AutoRun 'chcp 65001 >NUL'
Optional reading: Why the Windows PowerShell ISE is a poor choice:
While the ISE does have better Unicode rendering support than the console, it is generally a poor choice:
First and foremost, the ISE is obsolescent: it doesn't support PowerShell (Core) 7+, where all future development will go, and it isn't cross-platform, unlike the new premier IDE for both PowerShell editions, Visual Studio Code, which already speaks UTF-8 by default for PowerShell Core and can be configured to do so for Windows PowerShell.
The ISE is generally an environment for developing scripts, not for running them in production (if you're writing scripts (also) for others, you should assume that they'll be run in the console); notably, with respect to running code, the ISE's behavior is not the same as that of a regular console:
Poor support for running external programs, not only due to lack of supporting interactive ones (see next point), but also with respect to:
character encoding: the ISE mistakenly assumes that external programs use the ANSI code page by default, when in reality it is the OEM code page. E.g., by default this simple command, which tries to simply pass a string echoed from cmd.exe through, malfunctions (see below for a fix):
cmd /c echo hü | Write-Output
Inappropriate rendering of stderr output as PowerShell errors: see this answer.
The ISE dot-sources script-file invocations instead of running them in a child scope (the latter is what happens in a regular console window); that is, repeated invocations run in the very same scope. This can lead to subtle bugs, where definitions left behind by a previous run can affect subsequent ones.
As eryksun points out, the ISE doesn't support running interactive external console programs, namely those that require user input:
The problem is that it hides the console and redirects the process output (but not input) to a pipe. Most console applications switch to full buffering when a file is a pipe. Also, interactive applications require reading from stdin, which isn't possible from a hidden console window. (It can be unhidden via ShowWindow, but a separate window for input is clunky.)
If you're willing to live with that limitation, switching the active code page to 65001 (UTF-8) for proper communication with external programs requires an awkward workaround:
You must first force creation of the hidden console window by running any external program from the built-in console, e.g., chcp - you'll see a console window flash briefly.
Only then can you set [console]::OutputEncoding (and $OutputEncoding) to UTF-8, as shown above (if the hidden console hasn't been created yet, you'll get a handle is invalid error).
[1] In PowerShell, if you never call external programs, you needn't worry about the system locale (active code pages): PowerShell-native commands and .NET calls always communicate via UTF-16 strings (native .NET strings) and on file I/O apply default encodings that are independent of the system locale. Similarly, because the Unicode versions of the Windows API functions are used to print to and read from the console, non-ASCII characters always print correctly (within the rendering limitations of the console).
In cmd.exe, by contrast, the system locale matters for file I/O (with < and > redirections, but notably including what encoding to assume for batch-file source code), not just for communicating with external programs in-memory (such as when reading program output in a for /f loop).
[2] In PowerShell v4-, where the static ::new() method isn't available, use $OutputEncoding = (New-Object System.Text.UTF8Encoding).psobject.BaseObject. See GitHub issue #5763 for why the .psobject.BaseObject part is needed.
You can put the command chcp 65001 in your Powershell Profile, which will run it automatically when you open Powershell. However, this won't do anything for cmd.exe.
Microsoft is currently working on an improved terminal that will have full Unicode support. It is open source, and if you're using Windows 10 Version 1903 or later, you can already download a preview version.
Alternatively, you can use a third-party terminal emulator such as Terminus.
The Powershell ISE displays Korean perfectly fine. Here's a sample text file encoded in utf8 that would work:
PS C:\Users\js> cat .\korean.txt
The Korean language (South Korean: 한국어/韓國語 Hangugeo; North
Korean: 조선말/朝鮮말 Chosŏnmal) is an East Asian language
spoken by about 77 million people.[3]
Since the ISE comes with every version of Windows 10, I do not consider it obsolete. I disagree with whoever deleted my original answer.
The ISE has some limitations, but some scripting can be done with external commands:
echo 'list volume' | diskpart # as admin
cmd /c echo hi
EDIT:
If you have Windows 10 1903, you can download Windows Terminal from the Microsoft Store https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/introducing-windows-terminal/, and Korean text would work in there. Powershell 5 would need the text format to be UTF8 with bom or UTF16.
EDIT2:
It seems like the ideals are windows terminal + powershell 7 or vscode + powershell 7, for both pasting characters and output.
EDIT3:
Even in the EDIT2 situations, some unicode characters cannot be pasted, like ⇆ (U+21C6), or unicode spaces. Only PS7 in Osx would work.
Not entirely sure how to best explain, but would it be possible to use certain Unicode symbols, not supported by the Windows Command Prompt, in Git for Windows? Preferably without using Cygwin.
The git-bash.exe packaged with git-for-windows does support those unicode characters. (it uses minTTY)
But the cmd.exe console does not does (as pointed out by kostix in the comments) with a Unicode (TrueType) font set, although those ones (✔', '✖', '★') are not included in the TrueType fond like Lucida Consola.
We try to convert the source files of a TCL/TK application to UTF-8, because this is the default charset of the plattforms we use for development (Linux and OSX).
Our problem is now that windows uses "cp1252" as system encoding, and because of this displays labels and buttons with (for example) german umlauts wrong.
The only solution we found yet would be to add "-encoding UTF-8" to all "wish" calls and "source" commands.
(There is also "encoding system UTF-8", but the documentation says that you shouldn't use it because of problems with system calls)
Is there a way to tell TCL that it should use UTF-8 as default encoding for all source files, or maybe another solution for this problem?
The solution suggested in the TCL chat:
Create and use your own versions of "open" und "source" (like "my_open" and "my_source") which then call the original commands with "-encoding utf-8"
when I try to install something over Putty, it looks like this:
so really buggy :).
Has anyone a suggestion for this?
It's probably something to do with UTF-8 handling on different terminal types.
You could try this solution I found on linux.debian.user:
What release of PuTTY are you using? I'm using PuTTY 0.63, which is
the latest release. In this version, the default value for the terminal
type string is xterm. At least it is for me. I have to explicitly change
it to putty, even after setting the remote character set to UTF-8. Make
sure the terminal type string is all lower case. Terminal type strings
are case sensitive. They have to match the terminal type definition in
ncurses. The putty terminal type definition in ncurses can be found in
/usr/share/terminfo/p. You can also try a terminal type string of
xterm-utf8. This terminal type definition in ncurses is found in
/usr/share/terminfo/x. The latest version of PuTTY can be downloaded
here:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/linux.debian.user/Yy-kQu1RC44
It's indirectly related to UTF-8: the PuTTY developers chose to ignore VT100 line-drawing control sequences when UTF-8 encoding is used. Doing that requires any application that uses line-drawing to do some workaround.
You can work around this by one of these methods:
setting the NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS environment variable, as noted in the manual page, or
using a correct terminal description such as putty, which happens to have a special capability U8 defined, telling ncurses the same thing as the environment variable.
I want to write some pretty, special characters taken from Web in my Shell Console with echo command. I want to write, for example, ▲ character, but it shows me ��� character. How can I solve the problem? Thanks!
I am using Ubuntu 64 bit also. You should check your terminal type and what kind of character-set does it supports. Take a look at this
and this
You need to make sure you character sets match and that you are using the correct terminal emulation. This can be set on both the Linux side or using your terminal client software.
e.g. ANSI, VT100, Linux
Character sets like UTF-8 does include symbols.