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MBLEN(3)                      Linux Programmer's Manual                      MBLEN(3)

NAME         top

       mblen - determine number of bytes in next multibyte character

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <stdlib.h>

       int mblen(const char *s, size_t n);

DESCRIPTION         top

       If s is not a NULL pointer, the mblen() function inspects at most n bytes of
       the multibyte string starting at s and extracts the next complete multibyte
       character.  It uses a static anonymous shift state only known to the mblen()
       function.  If the multibyte character is not the null wide character, it
       returns the number of bytes that were consumed from s.  If the multibyte
       character is the null wide character, it returns 0.

       If the n bytes starting at s do not contain a complete multibyte character,
       mblen() returns -1.  This can happen even if n is greater than or equal to
       MB_CUR_MAX, if the multibyte string contains redundant shift sequences.

       If the multibyte string starting at s contains an invalid multibyte sequence
       before the next complete character, mblen() also returns -1.

       If s is a NULL pointer, the mblen() function resets the shift state, only
       known to this function, to the initial state, and returns nonzero if the
       encoding has nontrivial shift state, or zero if the encoding is stateless.

RETURN VALUE         top

       The mblen() function returns the number of bytes parsed from the multibyte
       sequence starting at s, if a non-null wide character was recognized.  It
       returns 0, if a null wide character was recognized.  It returns -1, if an
       invalid multibyte sequence was encountered or if it couldn't parse a complete
       multibyte character.

CONFORMING TO         top

       C99.

NOTES         top

       The behavior of mblen() depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the current
       locale.

       The function mbrlen(3) provides a better interface to the same functionality.

SEE ALSO         top

       mbrlen(3)

COLOPHON         top

       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                                   1999-07-25                             MBLEN(3)

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