Question

Im having a problem where a program i made cant display a string because it contains a unknown char. The program is encoded in latin i guess but how can it to utf-8?

I cant simply change the char because we are receiving this from our clients.

Or do i need to change this in SQL?

Answer 1

C++ builder 5 does not support natively UTF8. It uses the charset defined in Windows, under Control Panel / Regional Configuration.
For example, if your live in Sweden, probably your charset will be adapted to Swedish.
If you try to open a text from a database or a file from your application, the text needs to be codified in the same charset that Windows, Swedish in this example. In another case, you will get strange characters.

Following the example, if you want to display latin characters from your Swedish application, you need can use Unicode VCL controls like Tnt controls

Then, after reading the string, you need to convert it from latin to Unicode before to put it in the Tnt control. You can use the
MultiByteToWideChar function.
In any case, I would suggest you to update your C++ Builder to a recent version to support natively Unicode, the life is a lot easier.

If you simply wants to codify the string in the database and it does not care if you lose a symbol, you can convert the charset of text from latin to the Windows charset before to enter it in the database. You can use Notepad++ to convert the charset of a text.