execution_character_set pragma

Specifies the execution character set used for string and character literals. This directive isn't needed for literals marked with the u8 prefix.

Syntax

#pragma execution_character_set( "target" )

Parameters

target
Specifies the target execution character set. Currently the only target execution set supported is "utf-8".

Remarks

This compiler directive is obsolete in Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 and later versions. We recommend that you use the /execution-charset:utf-8 or /utf-8 compiler options together with the u8 prefix on narrow character and string literals that contain extended characters. For more information about the u8 prefix, see String and character literals. For more information about the compiler options, see /execution-charset (Set execution character set) and /utf-8 (Set source and execution character sets to UTF-8).

The #pragma execution_character_set("utf-8") directive tells the compiler to encode narrow character and narrow string literals in your source code as UTF-8 in the executable. This output encoding is independent of how the source file is encoded.

By default, when the compiler encodes narrow characters and narrow strings, it uses the current code page as the execution character set. Unicode or DBCS characters outside the range of the current code page get converted to the default replacement character in the output. Unicode and DBCS characters are truncated to their low-order byte, which is almost never what you intend. To specify the UTF-8 encoding for literals in the source file, use a u8 prefix. The compiler passes these UTF-8 encoded strings to the output unchanged. Narrow character literals prefixed by u8 must fit in a byte, or they're truncated on output.

By default, Visual Studio uses the current code page as the source character set used to interpret your source code for output. When a file is read in, Visual Studio interprets it according to the current code page unless the file has a code page set. Or, unless a byte-order mark (BOM) or UTF-16 characters are detected at the beginning of the file. You can't set UTF-8 as the current code page in some versions of Windows. When the automatic detection finds UTF-8 encoded source files without a BOM in those versions, Visual Studio assumes they're encoded in the current code page. Characters in the source file that are outside the range of the specified or automatically detected code page can cause compiler warnings and errors.

See also

Pragma directives and the __pragma and _Pragma keywords
/execution-charset (Set execution character set)
/utf-8 (Set source and execution character sets to UTF-8)