| NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON | The Linux Programming Interface |
WCSTOMBS(3) Linux Programmer's Manual WCSTOMBS(3)
wcstombs - convert a wide-character string to a multibyte string
#include <stdlib.h>
size_t wcstombs(char *dest, const wchar_t *src, size_t n);
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 L'\0'. In this case the conversion ends in the initial state.
The number of bytes written to dest, excluding the terminating '\0' byte, 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.
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.
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.
wcsrtombs(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 1999-07-25 WCSTOMBS(3)
HTML rendering created 2010-12-03 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface