Printing unicode to console in C#

Bwana Lawi

I can't get the Console to print unicode characters using the Console.WriteLine or Console.Out.WriteLine. After searching the Internet, I found two suggestions.

Console.OutputEncoding = Encoding.UTF8; // Option 1 for setting encoding
Console.WriteLine("Smiley face: ????");
Console.OutputEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8; //Option 2
Console.WriteLine("Smiley face: ????");

Problem is that both these approaches give the same error below:

Smiley face: ????

Exception thrown: 'System.IO.IOException' in mscorlib.dll

An unhandled exception of type 'System.IO.IOException' occurred in mscorlib.dll

The handle is invalid.

I have changed the console font to Lucida Console but still the unicode characters are not being printed

Environment:

IDE: VS Community version, 2017, Version 15.3.4

Windows 10

2 Replies

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Guest User9y ago
Hi Bwana,

Please try the code below:
Consider that the code for the Smiley Face in UNICODE is u263A as shown below.
static void Main(string[] args)
{
    Console.OutputEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;

    string a = "\u263A";
    Console.WriteLine(a);
    Console.ReadLine();
}
Gautam Parmar9y ago
Hi

Try below code may work for you

Console.OutputEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;
Console.Write(Strings.CharW("Smiley face: ????"));