What encoding does std::string.c_str() use?
c++, string, utf-8
Solution
`std::string` per se uses no encoding -- it will return the bytes you put in it. For example, those bytes might be using ISO-8859-1 encoding... or any other, really: the information about the encoding is just not there -- you have to know where the bytes were coming from!
Problem
I am trying to convert a C++ `std::string` to UTF-8 or `std::wstring` without losing information (consider a string that contains non-ASCII characters). According to http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=486770&forumID=31: If the std::string has non-ASCII characters, you must provide a function that converts from your encoding to UTF-8 [...] What encoding does `std::string.c_str()` use? How can I convert it to UTF-8 or `std::wstring` in a cross-platform fashion?