Why doesn't my terminal output unicode characters properly?

Question

For example, my terminal does this:

$ echo -e "\xE2\x98\xA0"
���

I expect it to do this:

$ echo -e "\xE2\x98\xA0"
☠

Why? How do I make my terminal output the proper unicode symbols?

I'm using Gnome 3's Terminal on Arch Linux.

The output of locale shows:

LANG=C
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_PAPER="C"
LC_NAME="C"
LC_ADDRESS="C"
LC_TELEPHONE="C"
LC_MEASUREMENT="C"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="C"
LC_ALL=

What operating system are you using? For OS X try: Terminal -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Char. Encoding : UTF-8 — Omar Wagih, Sep 29 '12 at 04:27
Besides op sys, also specify what terminal emulator program you use (eg, gnome-terminal, xterm, or others listed in [What is the best Linux terminal emulator?](http://superuser.com/questions/80506)), and what character encoding (eg Unicode UTF-8) and font is selected. On my ubuntu 12.04 linux system with gnome-terminal and UTF-8 and Monospace Bold the skull and crossbones appears ok. — James Waldby - jwpat7, Sep 29 '12 at 05:22
I'm also using Gnome Terminal... So where do I change those settings? Hmmmm.... I wonder if the face that running `locale` shows `LANG=C` is the problem... hmmmmm. — trusktr, Sep 29 '12 at 06:08
@trusktr My locale shows all of items = "en_US.UTF-8" , But I can't stil see unicode characters! — Dr.jacky, Oct 26 '15 at 12:36

score 17 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 29 '12 at 06:26

17

I figured it out. I had to make sure I set LANGUAGE="en_US.UTF-8" in /etc/rc.conf and LANG="en_US.UTF-8" in /etc/locale.conf, then logged out and logged back in and it worked. My terminal displays unicode properly now.

answered Sep 29 '12 at 06:26

trusktr

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13

Did not work for me, even though my locale is already correct. – bruno.braga Feb 25 '13 at 06:41
5

Everyone is moving to systemd these days. If you're using systemd, using rc.conf won't do anything. – trusktr Feb 27 '13 at 06:03
@trusktr There is no rc.conf ! Just a rc.local ! – Dr.jacky Oct 26 '15 at 12:34

Ben · Answer 2 · 2017-07-18T20:35:20.300

14

I updated my locale with the following command:

sudo update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=en.UTF-8

then rebooted:

sudo reboot

edited Jul 18 '17 at 20:35

answered Oct 04 '16 at 00:34

Ben

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score 11 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 11 '14 at 10:57

11

In case you cannot change /etc/* files, you can manually set the gnome-terminal menu Terminal|Set Character Encoding to Unicode(Utf-8)

answered Feb 11 '14 at 10:57

Nimlar

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4

And if I can change /etc/* , what should I do now?! – Dr.jacky Oct 26 '15 at 12:35
That worked for me (with GNOME Terminal 2.31.3) while changing the environment variables did not. – MassPikeMike Sep 18 '18 at 19:27

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 15 '21 at 16:32

I was trying to solve this after switching to a new PC. I'm using Windows Terminal with Ubuntu instilled in WSL2 on Win 10.

I tried the suggestions provided here and rebooted; no change.

Solution

The fix for me was installing a patched nerd font and setting the font as the default font for each profile in Windows Terminal settings.

Why doesn't my terminal output unicode characters properly?

4 Answers4

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