This is libc.info, produced by makeinfo version 4.3 from libc.texinfo.

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* Libc: (libc).                 C library.
END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY

   This file documents the GNU C library.

   This is Edition 0.10, last updated 2001-07-06, of `The GNU C Library
Reference Manual', for Version 2.2.x.

   Copyright (C) 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002
Free Software Foundation, Inc.

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   (a) The FSF's Front-Cover Text is:

   A GNU Manual

   (b) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is:

   You have freedom to copy and modify this GNU Manual, like GNU
software.  Copies published by the Free Software Foundation raise
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File: libc.info,  Node: Extended Char Intro,  Next: Charset Function Overview,  Up: Character Set Handling

Introduction to Extended Characters
===================================

   A variety of solutions is available to overcome the differences
between character sets with a 1:1 relation between bytes and characters
and character sets with ratios of 2:1 or 4:1.  The remainder of this
section gives a few examples to help understand the design decisions
made while developing the functionality of the C library.

   A distinction we have to make right away is between internal and
external representation.  "Internal representation" means the
representation used by a program while keeping the text in memory.
External representations are used when text is stored or transmitted
through some communication channel.  Examples of external
representations include files waiting in a directory to be read and
parsed.

   Traditionally there has been no difference between the two
representations.  It was equally comfortable and useful to use the same
single-byte representation internally and externally.  This comfort
level decreases with more and larger character sets.

   One of the problems to overcome with the internal representation is
handling text that is externally encoded using different character
sets.  Assume a program that reads two texts and compares them using
some metric.  The comparison can be usefully done only if the texts are
internally kept in a common format.

   For such a common format (= character set) eight bits are certainly
no longer enough.  So the smallest entity will have to grow: "wide
characters" will now be used.  Instead of one byte per character, two or
four will be used instead.  (Three are not good to address in memory and
more than four bytes seem not to be necessary).

   As shown in some other part of this manual, a completely new family
has been created of functions that can handle wide character texts in
memory.  The most commonly used character sets for such internal wide
character representations are Unicode and ISO 10646 (also known as UCS
for Universal Character Set).  Unicode was originally planned as a
16-bit character set; whereas, ISO 10646 was designed to be a 31-bit
large code space.  The two standards are practically identical.  They
have the same character repertoire and code table, but Unicode specifies
added semantics.  At the moment, only characters in the first `0x10000'
code positions (the so-called Basic Multilingual Plane, BMP) have been
assigned, but the assignment of more specialized characters outside this
16-bit space is already in progress.  A number of encodings have been
defined for Unicode and ISO 10646 characters: UCS-2 is a 16-bit word
that can only represent characters from the BMP, UCS-4 is a 32-bit word
than can represent any Unicode and ISO 10646 character, UTF-8 is an
ASCII compatible encoding where ASCII characters are represented by
ASCII bytes and non-ASCII characters by sequences of 2-6 non-ASCII
bytes, and finally UTF-16 is an extension of UCS-2 in which pairs of
certain UCS-2 words can be used to encode non-BMP characters up to
`0x10ffff'.

   To represent wide characters the `char' type is not suitable.  For
this reason the ISO C standard introduces a new type that is designed
to keep one character of a wide character string.  To maintain the
similarity there is also a type corresponding to `int' for those
functions that take a single wide character.

 - Data type: wchar_t
     This data type is used as the base type for wide character strings.
     In other words, arrays of objects of this type are the equivalent
     of `char[]' for multibyte character strings.  The type is defined
     in `stddef.h'.

     The ISO C90 standard, where `wchar_t' was introduced, does not say
     anything specific about the representation.  It only requires that
     this type is capable of storing all elements of the basic
     character set.  Therefore it would be legitimate to define
     `wchar_t' as `char', which might make sense for embedded systems.

     But for GNU systems `wchar_t' is always 32 bits wide and,
     therefore, capable of representing all UCS-4 values and,
     therefore, covering all of ISO 10646.  Some Unix systems define
     `wchar_t' as a 16-bit type and thereby follow Unicode very
     strictly.  This definition is perfectly fine with the standard,
     but it also means that to represent all characters from Unicode
     and ISO 10646 one has to use UTF-16 surrogate characters, which is
     in fact a multi-wide-character encoding.  But resorting to
     multi-wide-character encoding contradicts the purpose of the
     `wchar_t' type.

 - Data type: wint_t
     `wint_t' is a data type used for parameters and variables that
     contain a single wide character.  As the name suggests this type
     is the equivalent of `int' when using the normal `char' strings.
     The types `wchar_t' and `wint_t' often have the same
     representation if their size is 32 bits wide but if `wchar_t' is
     defined as `char' the type `wint_t' must be defined as `int' due
     to the parameter promotion.

     This type is defined in `wchar.h' and was introduced in
     Amendment 1 to ISO C90.

   As there are for the `char' data type macros are available for
specifying the minimum and maximum value representable in an object of
type `wchar_t'.

 - Macro: wint_t WCHAR_MIN
     The macro `WCHAR_MIN' evaluates to the minimum value representable
     by an object of type `wint_t'.

     This macro was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90.

 - Macro: wint_t WCHAR_MAX
     The macro `WCHAR_MAX' evaluates to the maximum value representable
     by an object of type `wint_t'.

     This macro was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90.

   Another special wide character value is the equivalent to `EOF'.

 - Macro: wint_t WEOF
     The macro `WEOF' evaluates to a constant expression of type
     `wint_t' whose value is different from any member of the extended
     character set.

     `WEOF' need not be the same value as `EOF' and unlike `EOF' it
     also need _not_ be negative.  In other words, sloppy code like

          {
            int c;
            ...
            while ((c = getc (fp)) < 0)
              ...
          }

     has to be rewritten to use `WEOF' explicitly when wide characters
     are used:

          {
            wint_t c;
            ...
            while ((c = wgetc (fp)) != WEOF)
              ...
          }

     This macro was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and is defined
     in `wchar.h'.

   These internal representations present problems when it comes to
storing and transmittal.  Because each single wide character consists
of more than one byte, they are effected by byte-ordering.  Thus,
machines with different endianesses would see different values when
accessing the same data.  This byte ordering concern also applies for
communication protocols that are all byte-based and, thereforet require
that the sender has to decide about splitting the wide character in
bytes.  A last (but not least important) point is that wide characters
often require more storage space than a customized byte-oriented
character set.

   For all the above reasons, an external encoding that is different
from the internal encoding is often used if the latter is UCS-2 or
UCS-4.  The external encoding is byte-based and can be chosen
appropriately for the environment and for the texts to be handled.  A
variety of different character sets can be used for this external
encoding (information that will not be exhaustively presented
here-instead, a description of the major groups will suffice).  All of
the ASCII-based character sets fulfill one requirement: they are
"filesystem safe."  This means that the character `'/'' is used in the
encoding _only_ to represent itself.  Things are a bit different for
character sets like EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange
Code, a character set family used by IBM), but if the operation system
does not understand EBCDIC directly the parameters-to-system calls have
to be converted first anyhow.

   * The simplest character sets are single-byte character sets.  There
     can be only up to 256 characters (for 8 bit character sets), which
     is not sufficient to cover all languages but might be sufficient
     to handle a specific text.  Handling of a 8 bit character sets is
     simple.  This is not true for other kinds presented later, and
     therefore, the application one uses might require the use of 8 bit
     character sets.

   * The ISO 2022 standard defines a mechanism for extended character
     sets where one character _can_ be represented by more than one
     byte.  This is achieved by associating a state with the text.
     Characters that can be used to change the state can be embedded in
     the text.  Each byte in the text might have a different
     interpretation in each state.  The state might even influence
     whether a given byte stands for a character on its own or whether
     it has to be combined with some more bytes.

     In most uses of ISO 2022 the defined character sets do not allow
     state changes that cover more than the next character.  This has
     the big advantage that whenever one can identify the beginning of
     the byte sequence of a character one can interpret a text
     correctly.  Examples of character sets using this policy are the
     various EUC character sets (used by Sun's operations systems,
     EUC-JP, EUC-KR, EUC-TW, and EUC-CN) or Shift_JIS (SJIS, a Japanese
     encoding).

     But there are also character sets using a state that is valid for
     more than one character and has to be changed by another byte
     sequence.  Examples for this are ISO-2022-JP, ISO-2022-KR, and
     ISO-2022-CN.

   * Early attempts to fix 8 bit character sets for other languages
     using the Roman alphabet lead to character sets like ISO 6937.
     Here bytes representing characters like the acute accent do not
     produce output themselves: one has to combine them with other
     characters to get the desired result.  For example, the byte
     sequence `0xc2 0x61' (non-spacing acute accent, followed by
     lower-case `a') to get the "small a with  acute" character.  To
     get the acute accent character on its own, one has to write `0xc2
     0x20' (the non-spacing acute followed by a space).

     Character sets like ISO 6937 are used in some embedded systems such
     as teletex.

   * Instead of converting the Unicode or ISO 10646 text used
     internally, it is often also sufficient to simply use an encoding
     different than UCS-2/UCS-4.  The Unicode and ISO 10646 standards
     even specify such an encoding: UTF-8.  This encoding is able to
     represent all of ISO 10646 31 bits in a byte string of length one
     to six.

     There were a few other attempts to encode ISO 10646 such as UTF-7,
     but UTF-8 is today the only encoding that should be used.  In
     fact, with any luck UTF-8 will soon be the only external encoding
     that has to be supported.  It proves to be universally usable and
     its only disadvantage is that it favors Roman languages by making
     the byte string representation of other scripts (Cyrillic, Greek,
     Asian scripts) longer than necessary if using a specific character
     set for these scripts.  Methods like the Unicode compression
     scheme can alleviate these problems.

   The question remaining is: how to select the character set or
encoding to use.  The answer: you cannot decide about it yourself, it
is decided by the developers of the system or the majority of the
users.  Since the goal is interoperability one has to use whatever the
other people one works with use.  If there are no constraints, the
selection is based on the requirements the expected circle of users
will have.  In other words, if a project is expected to be used in
only, say, Russia it is fine to use KOI8-R or a similar character set.
But if at the same time people from, say, Greece are participating one
should use a character set that allows all people to collaborate.

   The most widely useful solution seems to be: go with the most general
character set, namely ISO 10646.  Use UTF-8 as the external encoding
and problems about users not being able to use their own language
adequately are a thing of the past.

   One final comment about the choice of the wide character
representation is necessary at this point.  We have said above that the
natural choice is using Unicode or ISO 10646.  This is not required,
but at least encouraged, by the ISO C standard.  The standard defines
at least a macro `__STDC_ISO_10646__' that is only defined on systems
where the `wchar_t' type encodes ISO 10646 characters.  If this symbol
is not defined one should avoid making assumptions about the wide
character representation.  If the programmer uses only the functions
provided by the C library to handle wide character strings there should
be no compatibility problems with other systems.


File: libc.info,  Node: Charset Function Overview,  Next: Restartable multibyte conversion,  Prev: Extended Char Intro,  Up: Character Set Handling

Overview about Character Handling Functions
===========================================

   A Unix C library contains three different sets of functions in two
families to handle character set conversion.  One of the function
families (the most commonly used) is specified in the ISO C90 standard
and, therefore, is portable even beyond the Unix world.  Unfortunately
this family is the least useful one.  These functions should be avoided
whenever possible, especially when developing libraries (as opposed to
applications).

   The second family of functions got introduced in the early Unix
standards (XPG2) and is still part of the latest and greatest Unix
standard: Unix 98.  It is also the most powerful and useful set of
functions.  But we will start with the functions defined in Amendment 1
to ISO C90.


File: libc.info,  Node: Restartable multibyte conversion,  Next: Non-reentrant Conversion,  Prev: Charset Function Overview,  Up: Character Set Handling

Restartable Multibyte Conversion Functions
==========================================

   The ISO C standard defines functions to convert strings from a
multibyte representation to wide character strings.  There are a number
of peculiarities:

   * The character set assumed for the multibyte encoding is not
     specified as an argument to the functions.  Instead the character
     set specified by the `LC_CTYPE' category of the current locale is
     used; see *Note Locale Categories::.

   * The functions handling more than one character at a time require
     NUL terminated strings as the argument (i.e., converting blocks of
     text does not work unless one can add a NUL byte at an appropriate
     place).  The GNU C library contains some extensions to the
     standard that allow specifying a size, but basically they also
     expect terminated strings.

   Despite these limitations the ISO C functions can be used in many
contexts.  In graphical user interfaces, for instance, it is not
uncommon to have functions that require text to be displayed in a wide
character string if the text is not simple ASCII.  The text itself might
come from a file with translations and the user should decide about the
current locale, which determines the translation and therefore also the
external encoding used.  In such a situation (and many others) the
functions described here are perfect.  If more freedom while performing
the conversion is necessary take a look at the `iconv' functions (*note
Generic Charset Conversion::).

* Menu:

* Selecting the Conversion::     Selecting the conversion and its properties.
* Keeping the state::            Representing the state of the conversion.
* Converting a Character::       Converting Single Characters.
* Converting Strings::           Converting Multibyte and Wide Character
                                  Strings.
* Multibyte Conversion Example:: A Complete Multibyte Conversion Example.


File: libc.info,  Node: Selecting the Conversion,  Next: Keeping the state,  Up: Restartable multibyte conversion

Selecting the conversion and its properties
-------------------------------------------

   We already said above that the currently selected locale for the
`LC_CTYPE' category decides about the conversion that is performed by
the functions we are about to describe.  Each locale uses its own
character set (given as an argument to `localedef') and this is the one
assumed as the external multibyte encoding.  The wide character
character set always is UCS-4, at least on GNU systems.

   A characteristic of each multibyte character set is the maximum
number of bytes that can be necessary to represent one character.  This
information is quite important when writing code that uses the
conversion functions (as shown in the examples below).  The ISO C
standard defines two macros that provide this information.

 - Macro: int MB_LEN_MAX
     `MB_LEN_MAX' specifies the maximum number of bytes in the multibyte
     sequence for a single character in any of the supported locales.
     It is a compile-time constant and is defined in `limits.h'.

 - Macro: int MB_CUR_MAX
     `MB_CUR_MAX' expands into a positive integer expression that is the
     maximum number of bytes in a multibyte character in the current
     locale.  The value is never greater than `MB_LEN_MAX'.  Unlike
     `MB_LEN_MAX' this macro need not be a compile-time constant, and in
     the GNU C library it is not.

     `MB_CUR_MAX' is defined in `stdlib.h'.

   Two different macros are necessary since strictly ISO C90 compilers
do not allow variable length array definitions, but still it is
desirable to avoid dynamic allocation.  This incomplete piece of code
shows the problem:

     {
       char buf[MB_LEN_MAX];
       ssize_t len = 0;
     
       while (! feof (fp))
         {
           fread (&buf[len], 1, MB_CUR_MAX - len, fp);
           /* ... process buf */
           len -= used;
         }
     }

   The code in the inner loop is expected to have always enough bytes in
the array BUF to convert one multibyte character.  The array BUF has to
be sized statically since many compilers do not allow a variable size.
The `fread' call makes sure that `MB_CUR_MAX' bytes are always
available in BUF.  Note that it isn't a problem if `MB_CUR_MAX' is not
a compile-time constant.


File: libc.info,  Node: Keeping the state,  Next: Converting a Character,  Prev: Selecting the Conversion,  Up: Restartable multibyte conversion

Representing the state of the conversion
----------------------------------------

   In the introduction of this chapter it was said that certain
character sets use a "stateful" encoding.  That is, the encoded values
depend in some way on the previous bytes in the text.

   Since the conversion functions allow converting a text in more than
one step we must have a way to pass this information from one call of
the functions to another.

 - Data type: mbstate_t
     A variable of type `mbstate_t' can contain all the information
     about the "shift state" needed from one call to a conversion
     function to another.

     `mbstate_t' is defined in `wchar.h'.  It was introduced in
     Amendment 1 to ISO C90.

   To use objects of type `mbstate_t' the programmer has to define such
objects (normally as local variables on the stack) and pass a pointer to
the object to the conversion functions.  This way the conversion
function can update the object if the current multibyte character set
is stateful.

   There is no specific function or initializer to put the state object
in any specific state.  The rules are that the object should always
represent the initial state before the first use, and this is achieved
by clearing the whole variable with code such as follows:

     {
       mbstate_t state;
       memset (&state, '\0', sizeof (state));
       /* from now on STATE can be used.  */
       ...
     }

   When using the conversion functions to generate output it is often
necessary to test whether the current state corresponds to the initial
state.  This is necessary, for example, to decide whether to emit
escape sequences to set the state to the initial state at certain
sequence points.  Communication protocols often require this.

 - Function: int mbsinit (const mbstate_t *PS)
     The `mbsinit' function determines whether the state object pointed
     to by PS is in the initial state.  If PS is a null pointer or the
     object is in the initial state the return value is nonzero.
     Otherwise it is zero.

     `mbsinit' was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and is declared
     in `wchar.h'.

   Code using `mbsinit' often looks similar to this:

     {
       mbstate_t state;
       memset (&state, '\0', sizeof (state));
       /* Use STATE.  */
       ...
       if (! mbsinit (&state))
         {
           /* Emit code to return to initial state.  */
           const wchar_t empty[] = L"";
           const wchar_t *srcp = empty;
           wcsrtombs (outbuf, &srcp, outbuflen, &state);
         }
       ...
     }

   The code to emit the escape sequence to get back to the initial
state is interesting.  The `wcsrtombs' function can be used to
determine the necessary output code (*note Converting Strings::).
Please note that on GNU systems it is not necessary to perform this
extra action for the conversion from multibyte text to wide character
text since the wide character encoding is not stateful.  But there is
nothing mentioned in any standard that prohibits making `wchar_t' using
a stateful encoding.


File: libc.info,  Node: Converting a Character,  Next: Converting Strings,  Prev: Keeping the state,  Up: Restartable multibyte conversion

Converting Single Characters
----------------------------

   The most fundamental of the conversion functions are those dealing
with single characters.  Please note that this does not always mean
single bytes.  But since there is very often a subset of the multibyte
character set that consists of single byte sequences, there are
functions to help with converting bytes.  Frequently, ASCII is a subpart
of the multibyte character set.  In such a scenario, each ASCII
character stands for itself, and all other characters have at least a
first byte that is beyond the range 0 to 127.

 - Function: wint_t btowc (int C)
     The `btowc' function ("byte to wide character") converts a valid
     single byte character C in the initial shift state into the wide
     character equivalent using the conversion rules from the currently
     selected locale of the `LC_CTYPE' category.

     If `(unsigned char) C' is no valid single byte multibyte character
     or if C is `EOF', the function returns `WEOF'.

     Please note the restriction of C being tested for validity only in
     the initial shift state.  No `mbstate_t' object is used from which
     the state information is taken, and the function also does not use
     any static state.

     The `btowc' function was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and
     is declared in `wchar.h'.

   Despite the limitation that the single byte value always is
interpreted in the initial state this function is actually useful most
of the time.  Most characters are either entirely single-byte character
sets or they are extension to ASCII.  But then it is possible to write
code like this (not that this specific example is very useful):

     wchar_t *
     itow (unsigned long int val)
     {
       static wchar_t buf[30];
       wchar_t *wcp = &buf[29];
       *wcp = L'\0';
       while (val != 0)
         {
           *--wcp = btowc ('0' + val % 10);
           val /= 10;
         }
       if (wcp == &buf[29])
         *--wcp = L'0';
       return wcp;
     }

   Why is it necessary to use such a complicated implementation and not
simply cast `'0' + val % 10' to a wide character?  The answer is that
there is no guarantee that one can perform this kind of arithmetic on
the character of the character set used for `wchar_t' representation.
In other situations the bytes are not constant at compile time and so
the compiler cannot do the work.  In situations like this it is
necessary `btowc'.

There also is a function for the conversion in the other direction.

 - Function: int wctob (wint_t C)
     The `wctob' function ("wide character to byte") takes as the
     parameter a valid wide character.  If the multibyte representation
     for this character in the initial state is exactly one byte long,
     the return value of this function is this character.  Otherwise
     the return value is `EOF'.

     `wctob' was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and is declared
     in `wchar.h'.

   There are more general functions to convert single character from
multibyte representation to wide characters and vice versa.  These
functions pose no limit on the length of the multibyte representation
and they also do not require it to be in the initial state.

 - Function: size_t mbrtowc (wchar_t *restrict PWC, const char
          *restrict S, size_t N, mbstate_t *restrict PS)
     The `mbrtowc' function ("multibyte restartable to wide character")
     converts the next multibyte character in the string pointed to by
     S into a wide character and stores it in the wide character string
     pointed to by PWC.  The conversion is performed according to the
     locale currently selected for the `LC_CTYPE' category.  If the
     conversion for the character set used in the locale requires a
     state, the multibyte string is interpreted in the state
     represented by the object pointed to by PS.  If PS is a null
     pointer, a static, internal state variable used only by the
     `mbrtowc' function is used.

     If the next multibyte character corresponds to the NUL wide
     character, the return value of the function is 0 and the state
     object is afterwards in the initial state.  If the next N or fewer
     bytes form a correct multibyte character, the return value is the
     number of bytes starting from S that form the multibyte character.
     The conversion state is updated according to the bytes consumed
     in the conversion.  In both cases the wide character (either the
     `L'\0'' or the one found in the conversion) is stored in the
     string pointed to by PWC if PWC is not null.

     If the first N bytes of the multibyte string possibly form a valid
     multibyte character but there are more than N bytes needed to
     complete it, the return value of the function is `(size_t) -2' and
     no value is stored.  Please note that this can happen even if N
     has a value greater than or equal to `MB_CUR_MAX' since the input
     might contain redundant shift sequences.

     If the first `n' bytes of the multibyte string cannot possibly form
     a valid multibyte character, no value is stored, the global
     variable `errno' is set to the value `EILSEQ', and the function
     returns `(size_t) -1'.  The conversion state is afterwards
     undefined.

     `mbrtowc' was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and is declared
     in `wchar.h'.

   Use of `mbrtowc' is straightforward.  A function that copies a
multibyte string into a wide character string while at the same time
converting all lowercase characters into uppercase could look like this
(this is not the final version, just an example; it has no error
checking, and sometimes leaks memory):

     wchar_t *
     mbstouwcs (const char *s)
     {
       size_t len = strlen (s);
       wchar_t *result = malloc ((len + 1) * sizeof (wchar_t));
       wchar_t *wcp = result;
       wchar_t tmp[1];
       mbstate_t state;
       size_t nbytes;
     
       memset (&state, '\0', sizeof (state));
       while ((nbytes = mbrtowc (tmp, s, len, &state)) > 0)
         {
           if (nbytes >= (size_t) -2)
             /* Invalid input string.  */
             return NULL;
           *result++ = towupper (tmp[0]);
           len -= nbytes;
           s += nbytes;
         }
       return result;
     }

   The use of `mbrtowc' should be clear.  A single wide character is
stored in `TMP[0]', and the number of consumed bytes is stored in the
variable NBYTES.  If the conversion is successful, the uppercase
variant of the wide character is stored in the RESULT array and the
pointer to the input string and the number of available bytes is
adjusted.

   The only non-obvious thing about `mbrtowc' might be the way memory
is allocated for the result.  The above code uses the fact that there
can never be more wide characters in the converted results than there
are bytes in the multibyte input string.  This method yields a
pessimistic guess about the size of the result, and if many wide
character strings have to be constructed this way or if the strings are
long, the extra memory required to be allocated because the input
string contains multibyte characters might be significant.  The
allocated memory block can be resized to the correct size before
returning it, but a better solution might be to allocate just the right
amount of space for the result right away.  Unfortunately there is no
function to compute the length of the wide character string directly
from the multibyte string.  There is, however, a function that does
part of the work.

 - Function: size_t mbrlen (const char *restrict S, size_t N, mbstate_t
          *PS)
     The `mbrlen' function ("multibyte restartable length") computes
     the number of at most N bytes starting at S, which form the next
     valid and complete multibyte character.

     If the next multibyte character corresponds to the NUL wide
     character, the return value is 0.  If the next N bytes form a valid
     multibyte character, the number of bytes belonging to this
     multibyte character byte sequence is returned.

     If the the first N bytes possibly form a valid multibyte character
     but the character is incomplete, the return value is `(size_t)
     -2'.  Otherwise the multibyte character sequence is invalid and
     the return value is `(size_t) -1'.

     The multibyte sequence is interpreted in the state represented by
     the object pointed to by PS.  If PS is a null pointer, a state
     object local to `mbrlen' is used.

     `mbrlen' was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and is declared
     in `wchar.h'.

   The attentive reader now will note that `mbrlen' can be implemented
as

     mbrtowc (NULL, s, n, ps != NULL ? ps : &internal)

   This is true and in fact is mentioned in the official specification.
How can this function be used to determine the length of the wide
character string created from a multibyte character string?  It is not
directly usable, but we can define a function `mbslen' using it:

     size_t
     mbslen (const char *s)
     {
       mbstate_t state;
       size_t result = 0;
       size_t nbytes;
       memset (&state, '\0', sizeof (state));
       while ((nbytes = mbrlen (s, MB_LEN_MAX, &state)) > 0)
         {
           if (nbytes >= (size_t) -2)
             /* Something is wrong.  */
             return (size_t) -1;
           s += nbytes;
           ++result;
         }
       return result;
     }

   This function simply calls `mbrlen' for each multibyte character in
the string and counts the number of function calls.  Please note that
we here use `MB_LEN_MAX' as the size argument in the `mbrlen' call.
This is acceptable since a) this value is larger then the length of the
longest multibyte character sequence and b) we know that the string S
ends with a NUL byte, which cannot be part of any other multibyte
character sequence but the one representing the NUL wide character.
Therefore, the `mbrlen' function will never read invalid memory.

   Now that this function is available (just to make this clear, this
function is _not_ part of the GNU C library) we can compute the number
of wide character required to store the converted multibyte character
string S using

     wcs_bytes = (mbslen (s) + 1) * sizeof (wchar_t);

   Please note that the `mbslen' function is quite inefficient.  The
implementation of `mbstouwcs' with `mbslen' would have to perform the
conversion of the multibyte character input string twice, and this
conversion might be quite expensive.  So it is necessary to think about
the consequences of using the easier but imprecise method before doing
the work twice.

 - Function: size_t wcrtomb (char *restrict S, wchar_t WC, mbstate_t
          *restrict PS)
     The `wcrtomb' function ("wide character restartable to multibyte")
     converts a single wide character into a multibyte string
     corresponding to that wide character.

     If S is a null pointer, the function resets the state stored in
     the objects pointed to by PS (or the internal `mbstate_t' object)
     to the initial state.  This can also be achieved by a call like
     this:

          wcrtombs (temp_buf, L'\0', ps)

     since, if S is a null pointer, `wcrtomb' performs as if it writes
     into an internal buffer, which is guaranteed to be large enough.

     If WC is the NUL wide character, `wcrtomb' emits, if necessary, a
     shift sequence to get the state PS into the initial state followed
     by a single NUL byte, which is stored in the string S.

     Otherwise a byte sequence (possibly including shift sequences) is
     written into the string S.  This only happens if WC is a valid wide
     character (i.e., it has a multibyte representation in the
     character set selected by locale of the `LC_CTYPE' category).  If
     WC is no valid wide character, nothing is stored in the strings S,
     `errno' is set to `EILSEQ', the conversion state in PS is
     undefined and the return value is `(size_t) -1'.

     If no error occurred the function returns the number of bytes
     stored in the string S.  This includes all bytes representing shift
     sequences.

     One word about the interface of the function: there is no parameter
     specifying the length of the array S.  Instead the function
     assumes that there are at least `MB_CUR_MAX' bytes available since
     this is the maximum length of any byte sequence representing a
     single character.  So the caller has to make sure that there is
     enough space available, otherwise buffer overruns can occur.

     `wcrtomb' was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and is declared
     in `wchar.h'.

   Using `wcrtomb' is as easy as using `mbrtowc'.  The following
example appends a wide character string to a multibyte character string.
Again, the code is not really useful (or correct), it is simply here to
demonstrate the use and some problems.

     char *
     mbscatwcs (char *s, size_t len, const wchar_t *ws)
     {
       mbstate_t state;
       /* Find the end of the existing string.  */
       char *wp = strchr (s, '\0');
       len -= wp - s;
       memset (&state, '\0', sizeof (state));
       do
         {
           size_t nbytes;
           if (len < MB_CUR_LEN)
             {
               /* We cannot guarantee that the next
                  character fits into the buffer, so
                  return an error.  */
               errno = E2BIG;
               return NULL;
             }
           nbytes = wcrtomb (wp, *ws, &state);
           if (nbytes == (size_t) -1)
             /* Error in the conversion.  */
             return NULL;
           len -= nbytes;
           wp += nbytes;
         }
       while (*ws++ != L'\0');
       return s;
     }

   First the function has to find the end of the string currently in the
array S.  The `strchr' call does this very efficiently since a
requirement for multibyte character representations is that the NUL byte
is never used except to represent itself (and in this context, the end
of the string).

   After initializing the state object the loop is entered where the
first task is to make sure there is enough room in the array S.  We
abort if there are not at least `MB_CUR_LEN' bytes available.  This is
not always optimal but we have no other choice.  We might have less
than `MB_CUR_LEN' bytes available but the next multibyte character
might also be only one byte long.  At the time the `wcrtomb' call
returns it is too late to decide whether the buffer was large enough.
If this solution is unsuitable, there is a very slow but more accurate
solution.

       ...
       if (len < MB_CUR_LEN)
         {
           mbstate_t temp_state;
           memcpy (&temp_state, &state, sizeof (state));
           if (wcrtomb (NULL, *ws, &temp_state) > len)
             {
               /* We cannot guarantee that the next
                  character fits into the buffer, so
                  return an error.  */
               errno = E2BIG;
               return NULL;
             }
         }
       ...

   Here we perform the conversion that might overflow the buffer so that
we are afterwards in the position to make an exact decision about the
buffer size.  Please note the `NULL' argument for the destination
buffer in the new `wcrtomb' call; since we are not interested in the
converted text at this point, this is a nice way to express this.  The
most unusual thing about this piece of code certainly is the duplication
of the conversion state object, but if a change of the state is
necessary to emit the next multibyte character, we want to have the
same shift state change performed in the real conversion.  Therefore,
we have to preserve the initial shift state information.

   There are certainly many more and even better solutions to this
problem.  This example is only provided for educational purposes.


File: libc.info,  Node: Converting Strings,  Next: Multibyte Conversion Example,  Prev: Converting a Character,  Up: Restartable multibyte conversion

Converting Multibyte and Wide Character Strings
-----------------------------------------------

   The functions described in the previous section only convert a single
character at a time.  Most operations to be performed in real-world
programs include strings and therefore the ISO C standard also defines
conversions on entire strings.  However, the defined set of functions
is quite limited; therefore, the GNU C library contains a few
extensions that can help in some important situations.

 - Function: size_t mbsrtowcs (wchar_t *restrict DST, const char
          **restrict SRC, size_t LEN, mbstate_t *restrict PS)
     The `mbsrtowcs' function ("multibyte string restartable to wide
     character string") converts an NUL-terminated multibyte character
     string at `*SRC' into an equivalent wide character string,
     including the NUL wide character at the end.  The conversion is
     started using the state information from the object pointed to by
     PS or from an internal object of `mbsrtowcs' if PS is a null
     pointer.  Before returning, the state object is updated to match
     the state after the last converted character.  The state is the
     initial state if the terminating NUL byte is reached and converted.

     If DST is not a null pointer, the result is stored in the array
     pointed to by DST; otherwise, the conversion result is not
     available since it is stored in an internal buffer.

     If LEN wide characters are stored in the array DST before reaching
     the end of the input string, the conversion stops and LEN is
     returned.  If DST is a null pointer, LEN is never checked.

     Another reason for a premature return from the function call is if
     the input string contains an invalid multibyte sequence.  In this
     case the global variable `errno' is set to `EILSEQ' and the
     function returns `(size_t) -1'.

     In all other cases the function returns the number of wide
     characters converted during this call.  If DST is not null,
     `mbsrtowcs' stores in the pointer pointed to by SRC either a null
     pointer (if the NUL byte in the input string was reached) or the
     address of the byte following the last converted multibyte
     character.

     `mbsrtowcs' was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and is
     declared in `wchar.h'.

   The definition of the `mbsrtowcs' function has one important
limitation.  The requirement that DST has to be a NUL-terminated string
provides problems if one wants to convert buffers with text.  A buffer
is normally no collection of NUL-terminated strings but instead a
continuous collection of lines, separated by newline characters.  Now
assume that a function to convert one line from a buffer is needed.
Since the line is not NUL-terminated, the source pointer cannot
directly point into the unmodified text buffer.  This means, either one
inserts the NUL byte at the appropriate place for the time of the
`mbsrtowcs' function call (which is not doable for a read-only buffer
or in a multi-threaded application) or one copies the line in an extra
buffer where it can be terminated by a NUL byte.  Note that it is not
in general possible to limit the number of characters to convert by
setting the parameter LEN to any specific value.  Since it is not known
how many bytes each multibyte character sequence is in length, one can
only guess.

   There is still a problem with the method of NUL-terminating a line
right after the newline character, which could lead to very strange
results.  As said in the description of the `mbsrtowcs' function above
the conversion state is guaranteed to be in the initial shift state
after processing the NUL byte at the end of the input string.  But this
NUL byte is not really part of the text (i.e., the conversion state
after the newline in the original text could be something different
than the initial shift state and therefore the first character of the
next line is encoded using this state).  But the state in question is
never accessible to the user since the conversion stops after the NUL
byte (which resets the state).  Most stateful character sets in use
today require that the shift state after a newline be the initial
state-but this is not a strict guarantee.  Therefore, simply
NUL-terminating a piece of a running text is not always an adequate
solution and, therefore, should never be used in generally used code.

   The generic conversion interface (*note Generic Charset Conversion::)
does not have this limitation (it simply works on buffers, not
strings), and the GNU C library contains a set of functions that take
additional parameters specifying the maximal number of bytes that are
consumed from the input string.  This way the problem of `mbsrtowcs''s
example above could be solved by determining the line length and
passing this length to the function.

 - Function: size_t wcsrtombs (char *restrict DST, const wchar_t
          **restrict SRC, size_t LEN, mbstate_t *restrict PS)
     The `wcsrtombs' function ("wide character string restartable to
     multibyte string") converts the NUL-terminated wide character
     string at `*SRC' into an equivalent multibyte character string and
     stores the result in the array pointed to by DST.  The NUL wide
     character is also converted.  The conversion starts in the state
     described in the object pointed to by PS or by a state object
     locally to `wcsrtombs' in case PS is a null pointer.  If DST is a
     null pointer, the conversion is performed as usual but the result
     is not available.  If all characters of the input string were
     successfully converted and if DST is not a null pointer, the
     pointer pointed to by SRC gets assigned a null pointer.

     If one of the wide characters in the input string has no valid
     multibyte character equivalent, the conversion stops early, sets
     the global variable `errno' to `EILSEQ', and returns `(size_t) -1'.

     Another reason for a premature stop is if DST is not a null
     pointer and the next converted character would require more than
     LEN bytes in total to the array DST.  In this case (and if DEST is
     not a null pointer) the pointer pointed to by SRC is assigned a
     value pointing to the wide character right after the last one
     successfully converted.

     Except in the case of an encoding error the return value of the
     `wcsrtombs' function is the number of bytes in all the multibyte
     character sequences stored in DST.  Before returning the state in
     the object pointed to by PS (or the internal object in case PS is
     a null pointer) is updated to reflect the state after the last
     conversion.  The state is the initial shift state in case the
     terminating NUL wide character was converted.

     The `wcsrtombs' function was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90
     and is declared in `wchar.h'.

   The restriction mentioned above for the `mbsrtowcs' function applies
here also.  There is no possibility of directly controlling the number
of input characters.  One has to place the NUL wide character at the
correct place or control the consumed input indirectly via the
available output array size (the LEN parameter).

 - Function: size_t mbsnrtowcs (wchar_t *restrict DST, const char
          **restrict SRC, size_t NMC, size_t LEN, mbstate_t *restrict
          PS)
     The `mbsnrtowcs' function is very similar to the `mbsrtowcs'
     function.  All the parameters are the same except for NMC, which is
     new.  The return value is the same as for `mbsrtowcs'.

     This new parameter specifies how many bytes at most can be used
     from the multibyte character string.  In other words, the
     multibyte character string `*SRC' need not be NUL-terminated.  But
     if a NUL byte is found within the NMC first bytes of the string,
     the conversion stops here.

     This function is a GNU extension.  It is meant to work around the
     problems mentioned above.  Now it is possible to convert a buffer
     with multibyte character text piece for piece without having to
     care about inserting NUL bytes and the effect of NUL bytes on the
     conversion state.

   A function to convert a multibyte string into a wide character string
and display it could be written like this (this is not a really useful
example):

     void
     showmbs (const char *src, FILE *fp)
     {
       mbstate_t state;
       int cnt = 0;
       memset (&state, '\0', sizeof (state));
       while (1)
         {
           wchar_t linebuf[100];
           const char *endp = strchr (src, '\n');
           size_t n;
     
           /* Exit if there is no more line.  */
           if (endp == NULL)
             break;
     
           n = mbsnrtowcs (linebuf, &src, endp - src, 99, &state);
           linebuf[n] = L'\0';
           fprintf (fp, "line %d: \"%S\"\n", linebuf);
         }
     }

   There is no problem with the state after a call to `mbsnrtowcs'.
Since we don't insert characters in the strings that were not in there
right from the beginning and we use STATE only for the conversion of
the given buffer, there is no problem with altering the state.

 - Function: size_t wcsnrtombs (char *restrict DST, const wchar_t
          **restrict SRC, size_t NWC, size_t LEN, mbstate_t *restrict
          PS)
     The `wcsnrtombs' function implements the conversion from wide
     character strings to multibyte character strings.  It is similar to
     `wcsrtombs' but, just like `mbsnrtowcs', it takes an extra
     parameter, which specifies the length of the input string.

     No more than NWC wide characters from the input string `*SRC' are
     converted.  If the input string contains a NUL wide character in
     the first NWC characters, the conversion stops at this place.

     The `wcsnrtombs' function is a GNU extension and just like
     `mbsnrtowcs' helps in situations where no NUL-terminated input
     strings are available.

