This is somewhat related to question
On Windows 7, dir or tree can't show unicode characters, even starting cmd with cmd /U
Even on Windows 7, I found that the only way I can get unicode to go into a file is by
> cmd /U
> dir /B > files.txt
the file will be in "Unicode" when I open in Notepad and try "Save As", and if I dir /B > files.html and open the HTML file in firefox, it can show using Encoding of UTF-16 (or UTF-16 LE).
but, if I want to see it on the screen instead of having it go to a file, it is still impossible. Is there a way to make it happen? Possibly somehow telling cmd not to show nonprintable characters as "?"
Update: I tried cmd.exe, cygwin's bash on windows, and PowerShell. They are the same. Except if I change the "Properties -> Font" to Consolas or Lucida Console, there is some improvement — now it is not question mark but is either square border or square with a question mark in it.
The more expensive Mac computers with Mac OS X can do it. The free Ubuntu can do it too.
Best Answer
This is a very old question, but all of the answers given here are wrong.
You will never see Unicode output on the Windows command line (CMD.exe). The reason is that CMD cannot display Unicode. It can, however, display DBCS (Double-Byte Character Set).
If you want to see Japanese output, for example, you have to change your System Locale to Japanese and reboot. Then, you'll be able to see Japanese DBCS (i.e. Shift-JIS) characters on the command line. Windows supports Japanese Shift-JIS, Simplified Chinese, Korean, and Traditional Chinese "Big5" DBCS code pages.
Incidentally, you can pipe UTF-16 (inaccurately used interchangeably with "Unicode" by Microsoft) to a file, then open that file in, say, Notepad, and view the Unicode characters. You can also mark and copy the gibberish text from CMD.exe and paste it into Notepad and see the Unicode characters. In other words, CMD supports Unicode, but it doesn't display Unicode.
You can find more information in this blog post.