mbstowcs

 

C

Language

Standard Library

Type support

Dynamic memory management

Error handling

Program utilities

Date and time utilities

Strings library

Algorithms

Numerics

Input/output support

Localization support

Thread support (C11)

Atomic operations (C11)

 

Strings library

Byte strings

Multibyte strings

Wide strings

 

Null-terminated multibyte strings

Wide/multibyte conversions
mbsinit
mbtowc mbstowcs btowc mbrtowc mbsrtowcs mblen mbrtoc16 c16rtomb	wctomb wcstombs wctob wcrtomb wcsrtombs mbrlen mbrtoc32 c32rtomb
Types
mbstate_t

 

Defined in header <stdlib.h>
size_t mbstowcs( wchar_t          *dst, const char          *src, size_t len)		(until C99)
size_t mbstowcs( wchar_t *restrict dst, const char *restrict src, size_t len)		(since C99)

Converts a multibyte character string from the array whose first element is pointed to by src to its wide character representation. Converted characters are stored in the successive elements of the array pointed to by dst. No more than len wide characters are written to the destination array.

Each character is converted as if by a call to mbtowc, except that the mbtowc conversion state is unaffected. The conversion stops if:

• The multibyte null character was converted and stored.
• An invalid (in the current C locale) multibyte character was encountered.
• The next wide character to be stored would exceed len.

Notes

In most implementations, this function updates a global static object of type mbstate_t as it processes through the string, and cannot be called simultaneously by two threads, mbsrtowcs should be used in such cases.

POSIX specifies a common extension: if dst is a null pointer, this function returns the number of wide characters that would be written to dst, if converted. Similar behavior is standard for mbsrtowcs.

Parameters

dst	-	pointer to wide character array where the wide string will be stored
src	-	pointer to the first element of a null-terminated multibyte string to convert
len	-	number of wide characters available in the array pointed to by dst

Return value

On success, returns the number of wide characters, excluding the terminating L'\0', written to the destination array.

On conversion error (if invalid multibyte character was encountered), returns (size_t)-1.

See also

mbsrtowcs	converts a narrow multibyte character string to wide string, given state (function)
wcstombs	converts a wide string to narrow multibyte character string (function)
C++ documentation for mbstowcs