1WCSTOMBS(3) Linux Programmer's Manual WCSTOMBS(3)
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6 wcstombs - convert a wide-character string to a multibyte string
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9 #include <stdlib.h>
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11 size_t wcstombs(char *dest, const wchar_t *src, size_t n);
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14 If dest is not a NULL pointer, the wcstombs() function converts the
15 wide-character string src to a multibyte string starting at dest. At
16 most n bytes are written to dest. The conversion starts in the initial
17 state. The conversion can stop for three reasons:
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19 1. A wide character has been encountered that can not be represented as
20 a multibyte sequence (according to the current locale). In this case
21 (size_t) -1 is returned.
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23 2. The length limit forces a stop. In this case the number of bytes
24 written to dest is returned, but the shift state at this point is lost.
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26 3. The wide-character string has been completely converted, including
27 the terminating null wide character (L'\0'). In this case the conver‐
28 sion ends in the initial state. The number of bytes written to dest,
29 excluding the terminating null byte ('\0'), is returned.
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31 The programmer must ensure that there is room for at least n bytes at
32 dest.
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34 If dest is NULL, n is ignored, and the conversion proceeds as above,
35 except that the converted bytes are not written out to memory, and that
36 no length limit exists.
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38 In order to avoid the case 2 above, the programmer should make sure n
39 is greater or equal to wcstombs(NULL,src,0)+1.
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42 The wcstombs() function returns the number of bytes that make up the
43 converted part of multibyte sequence, not including the terminating
44 null byte. If a wide character was encountered which could not be con‐
45 verted, (size_t) -1 is returned.
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48 C99.
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51 The behavior of wcstombs() depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the cur‐
52 rent locale.
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54 The function wcsrtombs(3) provides a thread safe interface to the same
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58 mbstowcs(3), wcsrtombs(3)
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61 This page is part of release 3.53 of the Linux man-pages project. A
62 description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
63 be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
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67GNU 2011-10-16 WCSTOMBS(3)