Why does wide file-stream in C++ narrow written data by default?

Honestly, I just don't get the following design decision in C++ Standard library. When writing wide characters to a file, the wofstream converts wchar_t into char characters:

#include <fstream>
#include <string>

int main()
{
    using namespace std;

    wstring someString = L"Hello StackOverflow!";
    wofstream file(L"Test.txt");

    file << someString; // the output file will consist of ASCII characters!
}

I am aware that this has to do with the standard codecvt. There is codecvt for utf8 in Boost. Also, there is a codecvt for utf16 by Martin York here on SO. The question is why the standard codecvt converts wide-characters? why not write the characters as they are!

Also, are we gonna get real unicode streams with C++0x or am I missing something here?

Solution

The model used by C++ for charsets is inherited from C, and so dates back to at least 1989.

Two main points:

IO is done in term of char.
it is the job of the locale to determine how wide chars are serialized
the default locale (named "C") is very minimal (I don't remember the constraints from the standard, here it is able to handle only 7-bit ASCII as narrow and wide character set).
there is an environment determined locale named ""

So to get anything, you have to set the locale.

If I use the simple program

#include <locale>
#include <fstream>
#include <ostream>
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    wchar_t c = 0x00FF;
    std::locale::global(std::locale(""));
    std::wofstream os("test.dat");
    os << c << std::endl;
    if (!os) {
        std::cout << "Output failed\n";
    }
}

which use the environment locale and output the wide character of code 0x00FF to a file. If I ask to use the "C" locale, I get

$ env LC_ALL=C ./a.out
Output failed

the locale has been unable to handle the wide character and we get notified of the problem as the IO failed. If I run ask an UTF-8 locale, I get

$ env LC_ALL=en_US.utf8 ./a.out
$ od -t x1 test.dat
0000000 c3 bf 0a
0000003

(od -t x1 just dump the file represented in hex), exactly what I expect for an UTF-8 encoded file.