UTF-8 output on Windows console

The following code shows unexpected behaviour on my machine (tested with Visual C++ 2008 SP1 on Windows XP and VS 2012 on Windows 7):

#include <iostream>#include "Windows.h"int main() {    SetConsoleOutputCP( CP_UTF8 );    std::cout << "\xc3\xbc";    int fail = std::cout.fail() ? '1': '0';    fputc( fail, stdout );    fputs( "\xc3\xbc", stdout );}

I simply compiled with cl /EHsc test.cpp.

Windows XP: Output in a console window isü0ü (translated to Codepage 1252, originally shows some line drawing characters in the default Codepage, perhaps 437).

When I change the settings of the console window to use the "Lucida Console" character, set and run my test.exe again, the output is changed to 1ü, which means:

• the character ü can be written using fputs and its UTF-8 encoding C3 BC;
• std::cout does not work for whatever reason;
• the streams failbit is setting after trying to write the character.

Windows 7: Output using Consolas is ��0ü. Even more interesting. The correct bytes are written, probably (at least when redirecting the output to a file) and the stream state is ok, but the two bytes are written as separate characters.

I tried to raise this issue on "Microsoft Connect" (see [here), but MS has not been very helpful. You might as well look here as something similar has been asked before.

Can you reproduce this problem?

What am I doing wrong? Shouldn't the std::cout and the fputs have the sameeffect?