How to fix Visual Studio Code distorting characters on Windows? - visual-studio-code

Question

I have problems with Swedish national characters when using Rust in Visual Studio Code in Windows 11. It can be shown with the following program:
fn main() {
let abc = " ååå
ööö
äää";
println!("<---{}--->", abc);
}
When the program is run from the command line using cargo run, the output is as follows:
<--- ååå
ööö
äää--->
Strangely, spaces are added at the beginning of lines 2 and 3. However, when the program is run in Visual Studio Code, the Swedish characters get distorted.
<--- ååå
├╢├╢├╢
äää--->
How can I solve it? I work with text processing and this is a major problem.
EDIT: Since the problem doesn't appear on many systems, I add the technical data: Windows 11 Pro Version 10.0.22621 Build 22621;
Visual Studio Code Version: 1.73.1 (user setup) Date: 2022-11-09 Chromium: 102.0.5005.167 Node.js: 16.14.2 Sandboxed: No.

Answer 1

- This answer is Windows specific. -
INFO: This answer describes you how can change your VSCode settings to force UTF-8 in your console. An alternative to this answer would be to force UTF-8 system-wide, as described here: Using UTF-8 Encoding (CHCP 65001) in Command Prompt / Windows Powershell (Windows 10)
It seems that sometimes the Windows shell doesn't use the correct UTF-8 code page.
You can tell VSCode to force a codepage in its shell using the following settings.
Open the Settings page (Shortkey: Ctrl+,)
Click on the button on the top right whose mouse-over text reads "Open Settings (JSON)"
Add the following lines:
"terminal.integrated.profiles.windows": {
"PowerShell": {
"source": "PowerShell",
"icon": "terminal-powershell",
"args": [
"-NoExit",
"/c",
"chcp.com 65001"
]
},
"Command Prompt": {
"path": [
"${env:windir}\\Sysnative\\cmd.exe",
"${env:windir}\\System32\\cmd.exe"
],
"args": [
"/K",
"chcp 65001"
],
"icon": "terminal-cmd"
},
},
This will force the UTF-8 code page.
If it worked, opening a new shell should display Active code page: 65001.
Source: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/19837
Previous, deprecated settings:
If your shell is "CMD":
"terminal.integrated.shellArgs.windows": ["/K", "chcp 65001"],
If your shell is "Powershell":
"terminal.integrated.shellArgs.windows": ["-NoExit", "/c", "chcp.com 65001"],