mbrtowc(3) Library Functions Manual mbrtowc(3)
NAME
mbrtowc - convert a multibyte sequence to a wide character
LIBRARY
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <wchar.h>
size_t mbrtowc(wchar_t *restrict pwc, const char s[restrict .n],
size_t n, mbstate_t *restrict ps);
DESCRIPTION
The main case for this function is when s is not NULL and pwc is not
NULL. In this case, the mbrtowc() function inspects at most n bytes of
the multibyte string starting at s, extracts the next complete multibyte
character, converts it to a wide character and stores it at *pwc. It
updates the shift state *ps. If the converted wide character is not
L'\0' (the null wide character), it returns the number of bytes that
were consumed from s. If the converted wide character is L'\0', it re-
sets the shift state *ps to the initial state and returns 0.
If the n bytes starting at s do not contain a complete multibyte charac-
ter, mbrtowc() returns (size_t) -2. This can happen even if n >=
MB_CUR_MAX, if the multibyte string contains redundant shift sequences.
If the multibyte string starting at s contains an invalid multibyte se-
quence before the next complete character, mbrtowc() returns (size_t) -1
and sets errno to EILSEQ. In this case, the effects on *ps are unde-
fined.
A different case is when s is not NULL but pwc is NULL. In this case,
the mbrtowc() function behaves as above, except that it does not store
the converted wide character in memory.
A third case is when s is NULL. In this case, pwc and n are ignored.
If the conversion state represented by *ps denotes an incomplete multi-
byte character conversion, the mbrtowc() function returns (size_t) -1,
sets errno to EILSEQ, and leaves *ps in an undefined state. Otherwise,
the mbrtowc() function puts *ps in the initial state and returns 0.
In all of the above cases, if ps is NULL, a static anonymous state known
only to the mbrtowc() function is used instead. Otherwise, *ps must be
a valid mbstate_t object. An mbstate_t object a can be initialized to
the initial state by zeroing it, for example using
memset(&a, 0, sizeof(a));
RETURN VALUE
The mbrtowc() function returns the number of bytes parsed from the
multibyte sequence starting at s, if a non-L'\0' wide character was rec-
ognized. It returns 0, if a L'\0' wide character was recognized. It
returns (size_t) -1 and sets errno to EILSEQ, if an invalid multibyte
sequence was encountered. It returns (size_t) -2 if it couldn't parse a
complete multibyte character, meaning that n should be increased.
ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
┌─────────────────────────┬───────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├─────────────────────────┼───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ mbrtowc() │ Thread safety │ MT-Unsafe race:mbrtowc/!ps │
└─────────────────────────┴───────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
STANDARDS
C11, POSIX.1-2008.
HISTORY
POSIX.1-2001, C99.
NOTES
The behavior of mbrtowc() depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the cur-
rent locale.
SEE ALSO
mbsinit(3), mbsrtowcs(3)
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-06-15 mbrtowc(3)
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