Problem with 'é' character in listings

Question

I have this MWE

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[frenchb]{babel}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{color}


\lstset{frame=tb,
  language=Java,
  aboveskip=3mm,
  belowskip=3mm,
  showstringspaces=false,
  columns=flexible,
  basicstyle={\small\ttfamily},
  numbers=none,
  breaklines=true,
  breakatwhitespace=true,
  tabsize=3,
  extendedchars=true,
  postbreak=\space, breakindent=5pt, breaklines,
  literate={à}{{\`a}}1 {è}{{\`e}}1 {é}{{\'e}}1 {ê}{{\^e}}1 {ù}{{\`u}}1,
}


\begin{document}

 \begin{lstlisting}
  //...
  API api = new API(url);
  CultureIntermediaire cultureIntermediaire = resultat.getCultureIntermediaire();

  //On affiche le nom de la méthode de travail du sol la plus érosive

 \end{lstlisting}

\end{document}

Result

I have a problem : the "é" character is alone

Is there a way to tell listing to wrap when it find a point and not only a space. I want to get something like this :

CultureIntermediaire cultureIntermediaire = resultat.
                                          getCultureIntermediaire();

Answer 1

For the line break at period, you can do as the follow:

literate= {.}{}{1\discretionary{.}{}{.}},

Which does the line break at the ., however, it doesn't do it so beautifully. To tweak the output, have a look at this answer. This part of the answer tells you something: literate is some sort of hack to put unicode characters. Another solution could be to escape as Gonzalo suggests in this answer.

\lstset{frame=tb,
  language=Java,
  aboveskip=3mm,
  belowskip=3mm,
  showstringspaces=false,
  columns=flexible,
  basicstyle={\small\ttfamily},
  numbers=none,
  breaklines=true,
  breakatwhitespace=true,
  tabsize=3,
  extendedchars=true,
  postbreak=\space, breakindent=5pt, breaklines,
  escapeinside={\%*}{*)}, % I'm new here!
  literate= {.}{}{1\discretionary{.}{}{.}}, % So am I
}

with \usepackage{listingsutf8} as was suggested in the comment by egreg. You then have to replace your comment with the following

// %*On affiche le nom de la méthode de travail du sol la plus érosive!*)

that renders to

P.S. It is a good practice to have your code in a separate file and add it to listings with lstinputlisting. This not only makes the project more organizable, but also prevents some of the headaches related to listings. (for example, check the code in this answer to see how to use that command).

Answer 2

At first I thought that with a comment was enough, but I think this deserves an answer. Since is something I learned rather late (a few weeks ago).

listings is much more friendly if you use latin1 as input encoding. For instance, accents work without literate, that is, out of the box (and also non-breaking spaces).

What could go wrong? I don't know. What are the downsides/upsides of latin1? I don't know. Feel free to edit in case you know.

Remember to save the document with latin1 encoding.

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[frenchb]{babel}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{color}

\lstset%
 {frame = tb,
  language = Java,
  aboveskip = 3mm,
  belowskip = 3mm,
  showstringspaces = false,
  columns = flexible,
  basicstyle = {\small\ttfamily},
  numbers = none,
  breaklines = true,
  breakatwhitespace = true,
  tabsize = 3,
  extendedchars = true,
  postbreak = \space, breakindent = 5pt, breaklines,}

\begin{document}

\begin{lstlisting}
 //...
 API api = new API(url);
 CultureIntermediaire cultureIntermediaire = resultat.getCultureIntermediaire();

 //On affiche le nom de la méthode de travail du sol la plus érosive
\end{lstlisting}

\end{document}

---

As commented by @Pouya, in particular, french (e.g., œ, æ) is not fully supported (here is the Wikipedia article). However, it seems that latin9 (ISO-8859-15) does fully support it, so you may need to use it. Is it better? Again, I don't know. It would be great to have a complete reference about pros and cons of different encodings.