On Windows 7, dir or tree can't show unicode characters, even starting cmd with cmd /U

So I would press Window Key + R to run something, and type in cmd /U so that the content might handle Unicode.

And then using dir or tree /F, the content in Unicode won't show as Unicode. (in Window Explorer (file manager), the Unicode will show)

Is there a way to handle it? To get Unicode characters to test your filenames, you can go to

http://news.google.com/news?edchanged=1&ned=tw

and you will be able to get many Unicode characters there (UTF-8)

nonopolarity

Posted 2010-06-27T01:10:21.550

Reputation: 7 932

Have you tried this with Powershell yet? Windows 7 has it installed by default. – KdgDev – 2010-06-27T01:25:15.203

If I use PowerShell, and do a help ls -full it doesn't have such option as cmd's dir /B – nonopolarity – 2010-06-27T05:03:22.493

Remember, PowerShell pipes objects between commands - you can get behavior similar to dir /b by executing: dir | % { $_.Name } – Goyuix – 2010-11-18T14:27:05.207

@Guyuix: Or gci | select -expand Name – Joey – 2011-04-10T08:32:11.347

Answers

Change the font for the console window to a TrueType font, such as Lucida Console or Consolas. With raster fonts you are restricted to the OEm character set.

cmd /u only changes output piped into files, not what you see on screen.

PowerShell by default uses a TrueType font which is why it worked for you.

This has nothing to do with cmd.

Joey

Posted 2010-06-27T01:10:21.550

Reputation: 36 381

1@Joey The problem is entirely a result of using CMD. CMD cannot display Unicode characters. CMD can display DBCS characters, but only that of your system locale. Change your system locale to Shift-JIS, reboot, and you'll be able to show Japanese (Shift-JIS only, not Unicode) characters. The CMD command line processor supports Unicode, thus you can pipe output to files and open them in Notepad, for example, but you can't display Unicode. – Jeff – 2014-12-02T03:09:29.827

1@Jeff it can't display a lot characters simply because those characters aren't exist in the current font. It can't simply replace the characters by the same in another font like in GUI, as the font policy in cmd is very strict, it only accepts some specific fixed-width font. It isn't because of locale because if I set the codepage to Vietnamese, cmd can still display Russian, Turkish, Japanese... characters without problem, provided that the characters are available in the font. – phuclv – 2014-12-02T07:51:37.080

This is not really true that This has nothing to do with cmd. When I use dir /s into console, unicode characters are showed correctly, whilst when I pipe them into file, they are messed. Only chcp 65001 solves the problem. – Suncatcher – 2018-05-29T12:41:08.513

@Suncatcher: Redirection is a feature of cmd, so of course, if you use such a feature, cmd is involved. Try selecting and copying Unicode characters in the console, though, which has nothing to do with cmd. – Joey – 2018-05-29T13:58:49.890

1Even if I change to Lucida or Consolas and run cmd /u, I don't get the Unicode characters. – Snark – 2011-04-10T08:07:30.790

2If you see boxes, then it does indeed work. The console subsystem does not support font switching so it can only use glyphs from the single font you specified. And since neither font has glyphs for Han ideographs you'll see only boxes. However, the text is there; you can copy and paste it, for example. You won't see anything different in PowerShell, though, unless you use the PowerShell ISE (which is not a console application and therefore not subject to the same limitations). – Joey – 2011-04-10T08:31:37.260

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10764920/utf-16-on-cmd-exe

Open/run cmd.exe
Click on the icon at the top-left corner
Select properties
Then Font bar
Select Lucida Console and OK.
Write Chcp 10000 at the prompt
Finally dir /b

Also from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/379240/is-there-a-windows-command-shell-that-will-display-unicode-characters/24135341#24135341

CHCP 65001
DIR > UTF8.TXT
TYPE UTF8.TXT

user2718593

Posted 2010-06-27T01:10:21.550

Reputation: 11

For Japanese you can do chcp 932. But this uses Shift-JIS so the emoticons or Chinese won't work. – Tensigh – 2016-11-11T06:23:37.597

10000 is not a Unicode codepage and it can only displays characters in Mac Roman charset – phuclv – 2014-06-10T09:58:20.087

how can you display like, Chinese, Japanese characters or emoticons... in that codepage? – phuclv – 2014-06-10T10:01:43.380

Reg file

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console] "CodePage"=dword:fde9

Command Prompt

REG ADD HKCU\Console /v CodePage /t REG_DWORD /d 0xfde9

PowerShell

sp -t d HKCU:\Console CodePage 0xfde9

Cygwin

regtool set /user/Console/CodePage 0xfde9

user1069647

Posted 2010-06-27T01:10:21.550

Reputation: 1

It's not just a command prompt problem, but a Windows problem in general. The C "wide-character" functions in Windows (namely wprintf) do not support Unicode.

user541686

Posted 2010-06-27T01:10:21.550

Reputation: 21 330

@LưuVĩnhPhúc CMD cannot display Unicode characters. It can display DBCS characters. If you're seeing DBCS characters, it's because your system locale is set to something appropriate. For example, Japanese Shift-JIS (code page 932) will allow the display of Japanese characters. This is via DBCS, however, not Unicode. – Jeff – 2014-12-02T03:17:04.190

@Jeff Did you have a look at the pages on my comment above? cmd supports UTF-16 natively and UTF-8 if set to codepage 65001. You can write unicode characters out there without changing codepage. It's just the display not correct in some environment – phuclv – 2014-12-02T03:42:10.917

@LưuVĩnhPhúc as I said, CMD cannot display Unicode. I don't know what you think you're seeing displayed, but it's not Unicode. Given that the entire question was about displaying Unicode characters, I don't see the relevancy of CMD being Unicode "behind the scenes" and being able to copy/paste or pipe Unicode output. Your statement that the inability to display Unicode is a font problem is incorrect. It's because CMD is a DBCS program, not a Unicode program. – Jeff – 2014-12-02T06:01:57.910

@Jeff no, it supports Unicode. It's just the DBCS codepoints converted to Unicode. Don't you see the pictures with characters from different codepages? How can you display that in a specific codepage? And most of those codepages aren't DBCS either because they only use 1 byte for encoding the characters. – phuclv – 2014-12-02T07:43:47.357

Proof for your claim? MSDN constantly mentions the wide-char variants for Unicode. – Joey – 2011-04-10T08:34:45.230

1Here's one. – user541686 – 2011-04-10T08:37:56.273

you are aware that that is a bug that was reported on a prerelease version of Visual Studio 2005 and has been long fixed (not to mention that we're at VS 2010 by now ...)? Note also that the Windows API can easily be used and there is no particular reason to use the C standard library in places where no portability problems are likely to be encountered. – Joey – 2011-04-10T20:18:25.240

@Joey: No, I wasn't aware of that. However, right now I'm using Visual Studio 2008 and calling wprintf(L"私"), and it's definitely not printing anything Unicode. Do you have any example of complex scripts that do get printed with wprintf? (Locale changing shouldn't be needed because the strings are UTF-16.) – user541686 – 2011-04-10T20:24:03.893

The Windows console does support Unicode because it uses Unicode behind the scenes http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1259084/what-encoding-code-page-is-cmd-exe-using?lq=1 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2213541/vietnamese-character-in-net-console-application-utf-8?lq=1 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388490/unicode-characters-in-windows-command-line-how?lq=1 In Windows 7 codepage 65001 can't display the characters correctly but you can copy the them to a text editor to see the correct output. In Windows 8 it displays UTF-8 without problem

– phuclv – 2014-06-10T09:56:12.020

@LưuVĩnhPhúc: The question specifically said the console *cannot show* Unicode characters, not that it cannot copy them... so being able to copy-paste to see it correctly doesn't change anything about my answer. I haven't tried it on Win8 but I'm skeptical it would actually display Unicode properly... have you tried something complex like Chinese? – user541686 – 2014-06-10T11:46:44.173

Sorry I haven't test Chinese characters on Windows 8 before. But actually the inability to displaying all Unicode characters is a font problem, not because wprintf doesn't support Unicode, so your last statement is not correct. Chinese and Japanese locale Windows use a different font that I can't select in other locales. I don't know why they still don't allow for all monospace fonts and font substitution in console while this has been pointed out decades ago – phuclv – 2014-06-10T12:10:02.753

I have tested and indeed wprintf supports Unicode on Windows – phuclv – 2014-06-10T12:10:46.580