Is there a way to print Runes as individual characters?

Question

Program's Purpose: Rune Cipher

Edit:

Note - I am linking to my Own Github page below (it is only for purpose-purpose (no joke intended; it is only for the purpose of showing the purpose of it - what I needed help with (and got help, thanks once again to all of you!)

---

Final Edit:

I have now (thanks to the Extremely Useful answers provided by the Extremely Amazing People) Completed the project I've been working on; and - for future readers I am also providing the full code.

Again, This wouldn't have been possible without all the help I got from the guys below, thanks to them - once again!

Original code on GitHub

Code

(Shortened down a bit)

#include <stdio.h>
#include <locale.h>
#include <wchar.h>
#define UNICODE_BLOCK_START 0x16A0
#define UUICODE_BLOCK_END   0x16F1

int main(){
  setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
  wchar_t SUBALPHA[]=L"ᛠᚣᚫᛞᛟᛝᛚᛗᛖᛒᛏᛋᛉᛈᛇᛂᛁᚾᚻᚹᚷᚳᚱᚩᚦᚢ";
  wchar_t DATA[]=L"hello";
  
    int lenofData=0;
    int i=0;

    while(DATA[i]!='\0'){
          lenofData++;  i++;
          }

  for(int i=0; i<lenofData; i++) {
      printf("DATA[%d]=%lc",i,DATA[i]);
      DATA[i]=SUBALPHA[i];
      printf(" is now Replaced by %lc\n",DATA[i]); 
      }        printf("%ls",DATA);

return 0;
}

Output:

DATA[0]=h is now Replaced by ᛠ
DATA[1]=e is now Replaced by ᚣ
DATA[2]=l is now Replaced by ᚫ
DATA[3]=l is now Replaced by ᛞ
DATA[4]=o is now Replaced by ᛟ
ᛠᚣᚫᛞᛟ

Question continues below

(Note that it's solved, see Accepted answer!)

In Python3 it is easy to print runes:

for i in range(5794,5855):
print(chr(i))

outputs

ᚢ ᚣ (..) ᛝ ᛞ

How to do that in C ?

• using variables (char, char arrays[], int, ...)

Is there a way to e.g print ᛘᛙᛚᛛᛜᛝᛞ as individual characters?

When I try it, it just prints out both warnings about multi-character character constant 'ᛟ'.

I have tried having them as an array of char, a "string" (e.g char s1 = "ᛟᛒᛓ";)

• And then print out the first (ᛟ) char of s1: printf("%c", s1[0]); Now, this might seem very wrong to others.

One Example of how I thought of going with this:

Print a rune as "a individual character":

To print e.g 'A'

• printf("%c", 65); // 'A'

How do I do that, (if possible) but with a Rune ?

I have as well as tried printing it's digit value to char, which results in question marks, and - other, "undefined" results.

As I do not really remember exactly all the things I've tried so far, I will try my best to formulate this post.

If someone spots a a very easy (maybe, to him/her - even plain-obvious) solution(or trick/workaround) -

I would be super happy if you could point it out! Thanks!

This has bugged me for quite a while now, It works in python though - and it works (as far as I know) in c if you just "print" it (not trough any variable) but, e.g: printf("ᛟ"); this works, but as I said I want to do the same thing but, trough variables. (like, char runes[]="ᛋᛟ";) and then: printf("%c", runes[0]); // to get 'ᛋ' as the output

(Or similar, it does not need to be %c, as well as it does not need to be a char array/char variable) I am just trying to understand how to - do the above, (hopefully not too unreadable)

I am on Linux, and using GCC.

External Links

Python3 Cypher's - At GitHub

Viewing Runes - At Unix&Linux SE

junicode - At Sourceforge.io

Answer 1

To hold a character outside of the 8-bit range, you need a wchar_t (which isn't necessarily Unicode). Although wchar_t is a fundamental C type, you need to #include <wchar.h> to use it, and to use the wide character versions of string and I/O functions (such as putwc shown below).

You also need to ensure that you have activated a locale which supports wide characters, which should be the same locale as is being used by your terminal emulator (if you are writing to a terminal). Normally, that will be the default locale, selected with the string "".

Here's a simple equivalent to your Python code:

#include <locale.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <wchar.h>
int main(void) {
  setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
  /* As indicated in a comment, I should have checked the
   * return value from `putwc`; if it returns EOF and errno
   * is set to EILSEQ, then the current locale can't handle
   * runic characters.
   */
  for (wchar_t wc = 5794; wc < 5855; ++wc)
    putwc(wc, stdout);
  putwc(L'\n', stdout);
  return 0;
}

(Live on ideone.)