.\" Generated by the Allegro makedoc utility
.TH uconvert 3alleg4 "version 4.4.3" "Allegro" "Allegro manual"
.SH NAME
uconvert \- High level string encoding conversion wrapper. Allegro game programming library.\&
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B #include <allegro.h>

.sp
.B char *uconvert(const char *s, int type,
.B char *buf, int newtype, int size);
.SH DESCRIPTION
Higher level function running on top of do_uconvert(). This function 
converts the specified string `s' from `type' to `newtype', storing at most
`size' bytes into the output `buf' (including the terminating null
character), but it checks before doing the conversion, and doesn't bother
if the string formats are already the same (either both types are equal, or
one is ASCII, the other is UTF-8, and the string contains only 7-bit ASCII
characters).

As a convenience, if `buf' is NULL it will convert the string into an
internal static buffer and the `size' parameter will be ignored. You should
be wary of using this feature, though, because that buffer will be
overwritten the next time this routine is called, so don't expect the data
to persist across any other library calls. The static buffer may hold less
than 1024 characters, so you won't be able to convert large chunks of text.
Example:

.nf
   char *p = uconvert(input_string, U_CURRENT, buffer, U_ASCII, 256);
.fi
.SH "RETURN VALUE"
Returns a pointer to `buf' (or the static buffer if you used NULL) if a
conversion was performed. Otherwise returns a copy of `s'. In any cases,
you should use the return value rather than assuming that the string will
always be moved to `buf'.

.SH SEE ALSO
.BR set_uformat (3alleg4),
.BR need_uconvert (3alleg4),
.BR uconvert (3alleg4),
.BR uconvert_ascii (3alleg4),
.BR uconvert_toascii (3alleg4),
.BR do_uconvert (3alleg4)