File: gettext.info,  Node: Working in a Windows console,  Next: Installing Localizations,  Prev: Setting the POSIX Locale,  Up: Users

2.4 Obtaining good output in a Windows console
==============================================

   On Windows, consoles such as the one started by the ‘cmd.exe’ program
do input and output in an encoding, called "OEM code page", that is
different from the encoding that text-mode programs usually use, called
"ANSI code page".  (Note: This problem does not exist for Cygwin
consoles; these consoles do input and output in the UTF-8 encoding.)  As
a workaround, you may request that the programs produce output in this
"OEM" encoding.  To do so, set the environment variable ‘OUTPUT_CHARSET’
to the "OEM" encoding, through a command such as
     set OUTPUT_CHARSET=CP850
   Note: This has an effect only on strings looked up in message
catalogs; other categories of text are usually not affected by this
setting.  Note also that this environment variable also affects output
sent to a file or to a pipe; output to a file is most often expected to
be in the "ANSI" or in the UTF-8 encoding.

   Here are examples of the "ANSI" and "OEM" code pages:

Territories                            ANSI encoding      OEM encoding
                                      
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Western Europe                         CP1252             CP850
Slavic countries (Latin 2)             CP1250             CP852
Baltic countries                       CP1257             CP775
Russia                                 CP1251             CP866