I am trying to convert a Hebrew characters into UTF-8 and store them in a std::string.

I thought I’d give ICU a try.

Here is my minimal example:

#include <string>
#include <unicode/ustream.h>

int main(int argc, char** argv) 
{
   icu::UnicodeString us = L"עידן";
   std::string s;
   us.toUTF8String(s);
   return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

I would expect s to contain the same characters as the UnicodeString (although in UTF-8).

However, when looking at s in the debugger, the value of the string is: עידן.

I am clearly misunderstanding something about how to properly convert these unicode characters to fit and be understood using char.

What am I doing wrong here?