cmd is somehow writing Chinese text as output

Question

I have some trouble with `cmd.exe`. I use it sometimes to create files and write there the output. But if I try this: ``` wmic logicaldisk get name, freespace >> output.txt echo %date% >> output.txt ``` And I start it two to three times, I get an `output.txt` like: ``` FreeSpace Name 17990881280 C: D: 㠱〮⸴〲㈱ഠ䘊爀攀攀匀瀀愀挀攀 一愀洀攀 ഀ਀㄀㜀㤀㤀 㠀㠀㄀㈀㠀 䌀㨀 ഀ਀ 䐀㨀 ഀ਀㄀⸸㐰㈮㄰′਍ ``` Well, the Chinese text there looks funny, but I would like to see the date. I think somehow the encoding is changed with date. Everything is fine and I get the date if I do `echo %date% >> output.txt` alone. I would like to get the `wmic` output and the date. What should I do?

Accepted Answer

WMIC has some weird output. I've seen a discussion where it was said WMIC uses unicode, but I think the situation is more complicated than that. If I capture WMIC output to a file and use a hex editor, I see an extra carriage return at the end of each line. I am completely at a loss as to how the date content is converted into gibberish when the output.txt is typed. (codepage issue? but how?) On my machine I get question marks where the date should be.

I was able to fix the problem by using

```
wmic logicaldisk get name, freespace | more >>output.txt
echo %date%>>output.txt 
```

cmd is somehow writing Chinese text as output

Solution

Problem