wcstombs manual

wcstombs - convert a wide-character string to a multibyte string

If dest is not NULL, the wcstombs() function converts the wide-charac- ter string src to a multibyte string starting at dest. At most n bytes are written to dest. The sequence of characters placed in dest begins in the initial shift 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 con- version ends in the initial shift state. The number of bytes writ- ten 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 no length limit exists.

In order to avoid the case 2 above, the programmer should make sure n is greater than 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 a multibyte sequence, not including the terminating null byte. If a wide character was encountered which could not be con- verted, (size_t) -1 is returned.

Notes

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

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

See example

See also

https://github.com/ClnViewer/LibWchar2/blob/master/test/test_wcstombs.c

LibWchar2 information

Version

libwchar2 0.0.10

Date

Wed Aug 22 2018

Author

(c) PS 2018-2018

Manual author and license

Copyright

GNU Public License version 2. Manual license details