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

NAME         top

       wprintf,  fwprintf, swprintf, vwprintf, vfwprintf, vswprintf - formatted wide-
       character output conversion

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <stdio.h>
       #include <wchar.h>

       int wprintf(const wchar_t *format, ...);
       int fwprintf(FILE *stream, const wchar_t *format, ...);
       int swprintf(wchar_t *wcs, size_t maxlen,
                    const wchar_t *format, ...);

       int vwprintf(const wchar_t *format, va_list args);
       int vfwprintf(FILE *stream, const wchar_t *format, va_list args);
       int vswprintf(wchar_t *wcs, size_t maxlen,
                     const wchar_t *format, va_list args);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       All functions shown above:
           _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500 || _ISOC99_SOURCE || _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L;
           or cc -std=c99

DESCRIPTION         top

       The wprintf() family of functions is the wide-character equivalent of the
       printf(3) family of functions.  It performs formatted output of wide
       characters.

       The wprintf() and vwprintf() functions perform wide-character output to
       stdout.  stdout must not be byte oriented; see fwide(3) for more information.

       The fwprintf() and vfwprintf() functions perform wide-character output to
       stream.  stream must not be byte oriented; see fwide(3) for more information.

       The swprintf() and vswprintf() functions perform wide-character output to an
       array of wide characters.  The programmer must ensure that there is room for
       at least maxlen wide characters at wcs.

       These functions are like the printf(3), vprintf(3), fprintf(3), vfprintf(3),
       sprintf(3), vsprintf(3) functions except for the following differences:

       o      The format string is a wide-character string.

       o      The output consists of wide characters, not bytes.

       o      swprintf() and vswprintf() take a maxlen argument, sprintf(3) and
              vsprintf(3) do not.  (snprintf(3) and vsnprintf(3) take a maxlen
              argument, but these functions do not return -1 upon buffer overflow on
              Linux.)

       The treatment of the conversion characters c and s is different:

       c      If no l modifier is present, the int argument is converted to a wide
              character by a call to the btowc(3) function, and the resulting wide
              character is written.  If an l modifier is present, the wint_t (wide
              character) argument is written.

       s      If no l modifier is present: The const char * argument is expected to
              be a pointer to an array of character type (pointer to a string)
              containing a multibyte character sequence beginning in the initial
              shift state.  Characters from the array are converted to wide
              characters (each by a call to the mbrtowc(3) function with a conversion
              state starting in the initial state before the first byte).  The
              resulting wide characters are written up to (but not including) the
              terminating null wide character.  If a precision is specified, no more
              wide characters than the number specified are written.  Note that the
              precision determines the number of wide characters written, not the
              number of bytes or screen positions.  The array must contain a
              terminating null byte, unless a precision is given and it is so small
              that the number of converted wide characters reaches it before the end
              of the array is reached.  If an l modifier is present: The
              const wchar_t * argument is expected to be a pointer to an array of
              wide characters.  Wide characters from the array are written up to (but
              not including) a terminating null wide character.  If a precision is
              specified, no more than the number specified are written.  The array
              must contain a terminating null wide character, unless a precision is
              given and it is smaller than or equal to the number of wide characters
              in the array.

RETURN VALUE         top

       The functions return the number of wide characters written, excluding the
       terminating null wide character in case of the functions swprintf() and
       vswprintf().  They return -1 when an error occurs.

CONFORMING TO         top

       C99.

NOTES         top

       The behavior of wprintf() et al. depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the
       current locale.

       If the format string contains non-ASCII wide characters, the program will only
       work correctly if the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale at run time is
       the same as the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale at compile time.  This
       is because the wchar_t representation is platform- and locale-dependent.  (The
       glibc represents wide characters using their Unicode (ISO-10646) code point,
       but other platforms don't do this.  Also, the use of C99 universal character
       names of the form \unnnn does not solve this problem.)  Therefore, in
       internationalized programs, the format string should consist of ASCII wide
       characters only, or should be constructed at run time in an internationalized
       way (e.g., using gettext(3) or iconv(3), followed by mbstowcs(3)).

SEE ALSO         top

       fprintf(3), fputwc(3), fwide(3), printf(3), snprintf(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                                   2010-09-20                           WPRINTF(3)

HTML rendering created 2010-12-03 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface

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