NAME

       mbtowc - convert a multibyte sequence to a wide character

SYNOPSIS

       #include <stdlib.h>

       int mbtowc(wchar_t *pwc, const char *s, size_t n);

DESCRIPTION

       The  main  case  for this function is when s is not NULL and pwc is not NULL.  In this case, the mbtowc()
       function inspects at most n bytes of the multibyte string starting  at  s,  extracts  the  next  complete
       multibyte character, converts it to a wide character and stores it at *pwc.  It updates an internal shift
       state known only to the mbtowc() function.  If s does not point to a null byte  ('\0'),  it  returns  the
       number of bytes that were consumed from s, otherwise it returns 0.

       If the n bytes starting at s do not contain a complete multibyte character, or if they contain an invalid
       multibyte sequence, mbtowc() returns -1.  This can happen even if  n  >=  MB_CUR_MAX,  if  the  multibyte
       string contains redundant shift sequences.

       A  different  case  is when s is not NULL but pwc is NULL.  In this case the mbtowc() function behaves as
       above, except that it does not store the converted wide character in memory.

       A third case is when s is NULL.  In this case, pwc and n are ignored.  The mbtowc() function  resets  the
       shift  state,  only known to this function, to the initial state, and returns nonzero if the encoding has
       nontrivial shift state, or zero if the encoding is stateless.

RETURN VALUE

       If s is not NULL, the mbtowc() function returns the number of consumed bytes starting at s,  or  0  if  s
       points to a null byte, or -1 upon failure.

       If  s  is NULL, the mbtowc() function returns nonzero if the encoding has nontrivial shift state, or zero
       if the encoding is stateless.

CONFORMING TO

       C99.

NOTES

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

       This function is not multithread safe.  The function mbrtowc(3) provides a better interface to  the  same
       functionality.

SEE ALSO

       MB_CUR_MAX(3), mbrtowc(3), mbstowcs(3)

COLOPHON

       This  page  is  part  of  release 3.54 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/.