How to accept the output of a windows command called from node.js?

Question

Windows

Let's create an index.js file like this:

require('child_process').exec('dir', function(err, outstr){
   console.log(outstr);
});

After that, the output of the “ node ./ ” command, launched from Russian Windows, will be as follows:

??? ? ?????? U ????? ????? USBSTICK
 ?????? ????? ??: 467B-0CBE

 ???????? ????? U:\Fido\Soft\_Sources\node

24.11.2011  15:12    <DIR>          .
24.11.2011  15:12    <DIR>          ..
25.11.2011  09:36               522 index.js
               1 ????            522 ????
               2 ?????  17?412?767?744 ???? ??????

We will get approximately the same thing in the file if we write not to the console, but to the test file:

var fs = require('fs'); // file system

require('child_process').exec('dir', function(err, outstr){
   fs.createWriteStream('testfile.txt', {
      flags: 'w',
      encoding: 'binary'
   }).write(outstr);
});

The question is: how to be and what to do to get text in arbitrary encoding from the process? Obviously, Node.js doesn't expect the dir command to spew text into the CP866, and therefore fails unchildishly. We need to force Node.js to accept Russian text:

U:\Fido\Soft\_Sources\node>dir
 Том в устройстве U имеет метку USBSTICK
 Серийный номер тома: 467B-0CBE

 Содержимое папки U:\Fido\Soft\_Sources\node

24.11.2011  15:12    <DIR>          .
24.11.2011  15:12    <DIR>          ..
25.11.2011  09:37               522 index.js
               1 файлов            522 байт
               2 папок  17 412 767 744 байт свободно

How to achieve this?

Answer 1

There is a chcp command that changes the terminal encoding in Windows. In general, of course, it's better not to bathe, but to use good things in good server OS.

Answer 2

node-iconv doesn't help?

Answer 3

github.com/joyent/node/issues/2190