char16_t

Defined in header `<uchar.h>`		(since C11)
typedef uint_least16_t char16_t;		(since C11)
Defined in header `<stdint.h>`
typedef /implementation-defined/ uint_least16_t;		(since C99)

char16_t is an unsigned integer type used for 16-bit wide characters and is the same type as uint_least16_t.

uint_least16_t is the smallest unsigned integer type with width of at least 16 bits.

Notes

On any given platform, the width of type char16_t can be greater than 16 bits, but the actual values stored in an object of type char16_t will always have a width of 16 bits.

Example

Run this code

#include <uchar.h>
#include <stdio.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    char16_t wcs[] = u"zß水🍌"; // or "z\u00df\u6c34\U0001f34c"
    size_t wcs_sz = sizeof wcs / sizeof *wcs;
    printf("%zu UTF-16 code units: [ ", wcs_sz);
    for (size_t n = 0; n < wcs_sz; ++n) printf("%#x ", wcs[n]);
    printf("]\n");
}

Possible output:

6 UTF-16 code units: [ 0x7a 0xdf 0x6c34 0xd83c 0xdf4c 0 ]

References

C11 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2011):

7.28 Unicode utilities <uchar.h> (p: 398)

7.20.1.2 Minimum-width integer types (p: 290)

C99 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1999):

7.18.1.2 Minimum-width integer types (p: 256)

Language
headers
Type support
Dynamic memory management
Error handling
Program utilities
Variadic function support
Date and time utilities
Strings library
Algorithms
Numerics
Input/output support
Localization support
Thread support (C11)
Atomic operations (C11)
Technical Specifications

char16_t

Notes

Example

References

See also