NAME¶
wcstombs - convert a wide-character string to a multibyte string
SYNOPSIS¶
#include <stdlib.h>
size_t wcstombs(char *dest, const wchar_t *src, size_t n);
DESCRIPTION¶
If
dest is not a NULL pointer, the
wcstombs() function converts
the wide-character string
src to a multibyte string starting at
dest. At most
n bytes are written to
dest. The conversion
starts in the initial state. The conversion can stop for three reasons:
1. A wide character has been encountered that can not be represented as a
multibyte sequence (according to the current locale). In this case
(size_t) -1 is returned.
2. The length limit forces a stop. In this case the number of bytes written to
dest is returned, but the shift state at this point is lost.
3. The wide-character string has been completely converted, including the
terminating null wide character (L'\0'). In this case the conversion ends in
the initial state. The number of bytes written to
dest, excluding the
terminating null byte ('\0'), is returned.
The programmer must ensure that there is room for at least
n bytes at
dest.
If
dest is NULL,
n is ignored, and the conversion proceeds as
above, except that the converted bytes are not written out to memory, and that
no length limit exists.
In order to avoid the case 2 above, the programmer should make sure
n is
greater or equal to
wcstombs(NULL,src,0)+1.
RETURN VALUE¶
The
wcstombs() function returns the number of bytes that make up the
converted part of multibyte sequence, not including the terminating null byte.
If a wide character was encountered which could not be converted,
(size_t) -1 is returned.
C99.
NOTES¶
The behavior of
wcstombs() depends on the
LC_CTYPE category of the
current locale.
The function
wcsrtombs(3) provides a thread safe interface to the same
functionality.
SEE ALSO¶
mbstowcs(3),
wcsrtombs(3)
COLOPHON¶
This page is part of release 3.44 of the Linux
man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found
at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
