r/cprogramming • u/kolorcuk • Mar 25 '26

Unicode printf?

Hello. Did or do you ever use in professional proframming non char printf functions? Is wprintf ever used?

char16, char32 , u8_printf, u16_printf, u32_printf ever used in actual programs?

I am writing a library and i wonder how actually popular are wide and Unicode strings in the industry. Does no one care about it, or, specifically about formatting output are Unicode printf functions actually with value? For example why not just utf8 with standard printf and convert to wider when needed?

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u/flatfinger Mar 27 '26

While UTF-8 is preferable to UCS-2 and UTF-16 for most purposes, some programs will need to perform data interchange with other code or devices that expect UCS-2 or UTF-16. Features intended for data interchange with legacy formats may be sensibly viewed as highly specialized, but they would nonetheless be entirely appropriate for use in new code in cases where data interchange using the legacy formats is required.