Ubuntu server outputs messages in funky characters

Question

I just installed Ubuntu server 13.10. I just started using and when I compile code in C I get funky output:

warning: format â%sâ expects argument of type âchar *â, but argument 2 has type âMYSQL_ROWâ [-Wformat=]
     printf("number of free = %s\n", row);   

I didn't change any settings and did default install. Does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Looks like your locale and/or terminal character set is configured for some legacy 8-bit encoding. At a minimum, make sure they agree; in the worst case, force everything to 7-bit ASCII; but in this day and age, Unicode should be the baseline.