Name

mbrtowc - convert a character to a wide-character code (restartable)

Library

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

Synopsis

#include <wchar.h>

size_t
mbrtowc(wchar_t * restrict pwc, const char * restrict s, size_t n, mbstate_t * restrict ps);

Description

The mbrtowc() function inspects at most n bytes pointed to by s and interprets them as a multibyte character sequence according to the current setting of LC_CTYPE. If pwc is not NULL, the multibyte character which s represents is stored in the wchar_t it points to.

If s is NULL, mbrtowc() behaves as if pwc was NULL, s was an empty string ("") and n was 1.

The mbstate_t argument, ps, is used to keep track of the shift state. If it is NULL, mbrtowc() uses an internal, static mbstate_t object.

Return Values

The mbrtowc() functions returns:

0

The first n or fewer bytes of s represent the null wide character (L'\0').

>0

The first n or fewer bytes of s represent a valid character, mbrtowc() returns the length (in bytes) of the multibyte sequence.

(size_t)-2
The first n bytes of s are an incomplete multibyte sequence.

(size_t)-1
The byte sequence pointed to by s is an invalid multibyte sequence.

Errors

The mbrtowc() function will fail if:

[EILSEQ]

An invalid multibyte sequence was detected.

See Also

mbtowc(3) , setlocale(3) , wcrtomb(3)

Standards

The mbrtowc() function conforms to ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (``ISO C99'').

Bugs

The current implementation does not support shift states.

Table of Contents

• Name
• Library
• Synopsis
• Description
• Return Values
• Errors
• See Also
• Standards
• Bugs