Opening fstream with file with Unicode file name under Windows using non-MSVC compiler

Question

I need to open a file as std::fstream (or actually any other std::ostream) when file name is "Unicode" file name.

Under MSVC I have non-standard extension std::fstream::open(wchar_t const *,...)? What can I do with other compilers like GCC (most important) and probably Borland compiler.

I know that CRTL provides _wfopen but it gives C FILE * interface instead of io-streams, maybe there is a non-standard way to create io-stream from FILE *? Is there any boost::ifstream with MSVC like extension for Windows?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there's no standard way to do that, although C++0x (1x?) promises to do that. Until then, you properly assumed that a solution can be found in Boost, however, the library you're searching for is Boost.Filesystem.

Boost.Filesystem internally uses wide strings by default for its universal path system, so there are no unicode problems in this regard.

Answer 2

Currently there is no easy solution.

You need to create your own stream buffer that uses _wfopen under the hood. You can use for this for example boost::iostream

Answer 3

Convert the Unicode filename to a char* string using something like wcstombs() or WideCharToMultiByte() (which gives you far more control over the codepages involved).

Then use the converted filename to open the file.