| NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | VERSIONS | CONFORMING TO | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON | The Linux Programming Interface |
ICONV_OPEN(3) Linux Programmer's Manual ICONV_OPEN(3)
iconv_open - allocate descriptor for character set conversion
#include <iconv.h>
iconv_t iconv_open(const char *tocode, const char *fromcode);
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 combinations
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, transliteration 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 using
iconv_open(), the state is in the initial state. Using iconv(3) modifies the
descriptor's conversion state. (This implies that a conversion descriptor can
not be used in multiple threads simultaneously.) To bring the state back to
the initial state, use iconv(3) with NULL as inbuf argument.
The iconv_open() function returns a freshly allocated conversion descriptor.
In case of error, it sets errno and returns (iconv_t) -1.
The following error can occur, among others:
EINVAL The conversion from fromcode to tocode is not supported by the
implementation.
This function is available in glibc since version 2.1.
UNIX98, POSIX.1-2001.
iconv(1), iconv(3), iconv_close(3)
This page is part of release 3.32 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/.
GNU 2008-08-11 ICONV_OPEN(3)
HTML rendering created 2010-12-03 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface