iconv_open(3) Library Functions Manual iconv_open(3)
NAME
iconv_open - allocate descriptor for character set conversion
LIBRARY
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <iconv.h>
iconv_t iconv_open(const char *tocode, const char *fromcode);
DESCRIPTION
The iconv_open() function allocates a conversion descriptor suitable for
converting byte sequences from character encoding fromcode to character
encoding tocode.
The values permitted for fromcode and tocode and the supported combina-
tions are system-dependent. For the GNU C library, the permitted values
are listed by the iconv --list command, and all combinations of the
listed values are supported. Furthermore the GNU C library and the GNU
libiconv library support the following two suffixes:
//TRANSLIT
When the string "//TRANSLIT" is appended to tocode, translitera-
tion is activated. This means that when a character cannot be
represented in the target character set, it can be approximated
through one or several similarly looking characters.
//IGNORE
When the string "//IGNORE" is appended to tocode, characters that
cannot be represented in the target character set will be
silently discarded.
The resulting conversion descriptor can be used with iconv(3) any number
of times. It remains valid until deallocated using iconv_close(3).
A conversion descriptor contains a conversion state. After creation us-
ing iconv_open(), the state is in the initial state. Using iconv(3)
modifies the descriptor's conversion state. To bring the state back to
the initial state, use iconv(3) with NULL as inbuf argument.
RETURN VALUE
On success, iconv_open() returns a freshly allocated conversion descrip-
tor. On failure, it returns (iconv_t) -1 and sets errno to indicate the
error.
ERRORS
The following error can occur, among others:
EINVAL The conversion from fromcode to tocode is not supported by the
implementation.
ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
┌─────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬────────────────┐
│ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├─────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼────────────────┤
│ iconv_open() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe locale │
└─────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴────────────────┘
STANDARDS
POSIX.1-2008.
HISTORY
glibc 2.1. POSIX.1-2001, SUSv2.
SEE ALSO
iconv(1), iconv(3), iconv_close(3)
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-05-02 iconv_open(3)
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