C++ Eclipse console encoding plain text as other characters

Question

I have a C++ program running on an Intel Edison reading some GPS data from a serial port and echoing it back to the console.

That part is working fine, but when the strings are read in the console they have characters that shouldn't be there, like "¬é­". I'm guessing that something is messed up with encoding in the Eclipse console/G++, and it thinks some of the readings are character codes.

Here is some output from the Eclipse Console:

$GPVTG,,T,,M,0.041,N,0.075,K,A*24
$GPGGA,225153.00,5206.75433,N,12206.88881,W,1,10,1.03,582.1,M,-15.6,M,,*6F
$GPGSA,A,3,32,02,12,14,24,06,03,19,17,25,,,1.84,1.03,1.53*05
$GPGSV,3,1,11,¬é­N
-> 02,51,176,30,03,10,027,17,06,60,088,33,12,68,295,36*79
$GPGSV,3,2,11,14,10,316,30,17,20,072,27,19,45,069,40,24,36,215,35*7E
$GPGSV,3,3,11,25,29,301,28,29,05,254,,32,07,305,33*40
$GPGLL,5206.75433,N,12206.88881,W,225153.00,A,A*78
.53*05
$GPGSV,3,1,11,¬é­N

And here is some of the output as read directly from the serial port on the Edison (cat /dev/ttyMFD1):

$GPVTG,,T,,M,0.048,N,0.090,K,A*26
$GPGGA,225407.00,5206.75339,N,12206.88816,W,1,10,1.02,584.2,M,-15.6,M,,*6C
$GPGSA,A,3,32,02,12,14,24,06,03,19,17,25,,,1.80,1.02,1.49*0B
$GPGSV,3,1,11,02,52,176,15,03,10,026,20,06,59,086,29,12,69,295,41*76
$GPGSV,3,2,11,14,09,316,29,17,19,072,29,19,44,070,34,24,35,215,32*74
$GPGSV,3,3,11,25,30,301,29,29,06,254,,32,06,304,17*4C
$GPGLL,5206.75339,N,12206.88816,W,225407.00,A,A*7F
$GPRMC,225408.00,A,5206.75337,N,12206.88814,W,0.058,,170616,,,A*6F

I tried all the encoding options available in the run configurations common tab, but they all produced stranger results, even Chinese characters!

The relevant code is char array[255]; to initialize the buffer, and then this to read the serial data into the buffer and output it into the console:

while(true){
    dev->read(array,255);
    std::cout<<"-> "<<array<<std::endl;
}

Answer 1

Turns out it wasn't an issue with encoding. I started to realize it was something else when I tried to do the same thing with NodeJS, and got the same output back.

I forgot that the correct way to read the output from this GPS module is to read the characters one at a time until you hit the newline terminator at the end of the line, and then work with it/log it to console.

So my code then became:

char array[255];
char c[1];
int i = 0;

while(true){
     dev->read(c,1);

     if(c[0] == '\n'){
         i = 0;

         std::cout<<"-> "<<array<<std::endl;

         char *begin = array;
         char *end = begin + sizeof(array);
         std::fill(begin, end, 0);
     }else{
         array[i] = c[0];
         ++i;
     }
}

Which now works perfectly :)