mbrtowc

 

C

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

 

Strings library

Byte strings

Multibyte strings

Wide strings

 

Null-terminated multibyte strings

Wide/multibyte conversions
mbsinit (C95)
mbtowc mbstowcsmbstowcs_s (C11) btowc (C95) mbrtowc (C95) mbsrtowcsmbsrtowcs_s (C95)(C11) mbrtoc16 (C11) c16rtomb (C11) c32rtomb (C11) mbrtoc32 (C11)	mblen wctombwctomb_s (C11) wcstombswcstombs_s (C11) wctob (C95) wcrtombwcrtomb_s (C95)(C11) wcsrtombswcsrtombs_s (C95)(C11) mbrlen (C95)
Types
mbstate_t (C95)

 

Defined in header <wchar.h>
size_t mbrtowc( wchar_t* pwc, const char* s, size_t n, mbstate_t* ps );		(since C95)
size_t mbrtowc( wchar_t *restrict pwc, const char *restrict s, size_t n,                 mbstate_t *restrict ps );		(since C99)

Converts a narrow multibyte character to its wide character representation.

If s is not a null pointer, inspects at most n bytes of the multibyte character string, beginning with the byte pointed to by s to determine the number of bytes necessary to complete the next multibyte character (including any shift sequences). If the function determines that the next multibyte character in s is complete and valid, converts it to the corresponding wide character and stores it in *pwc (if pwc is not null).

If s is a null pointer, the values of n and pwc are ignored and call is equivalent to mbrtowc(NULL, "", 1, ps).

If the wide character produced is the null character, the conversion state stored in *ps is the initial shift state.

Parameters

pwc	-	pointer to the location where the resulting wide character will be written
s	-	pointer to the multibyte character string used as input
n	-	limit on the number of bytes in s that can be examined
ps	-	pointer to the conversion state used when interpreting the multibyte character string

Return value

The first of the following that applies:

• ​0​ if the character converted from s (and stored in pwc if non-null) was the null character
• the number of bytes [1...n] of the multibyte character successfully converted from s
• (size_t)-2 if the next n bytes constitute an incomplete, but so far valid, multibyte character. Nothing is written to *pwc.
• (size_t)-1 if encoding error occurs. Nothing is written to *pwc, the value EILSEQ is stored in errno and the value of *ps is left unspecified.

Example

Run this code

#include <stdio.h>
#include <locale.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <wchar.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_US.utf8");
    mbstate_t state;
    memset(&state, 0, sizeof state);
    char in[] = u8"z\u00df\u6c34\U0001F34C"; // or u8"zß水🍌"
    size_t in_sz = sizeof in / sizeof *in;
 
    printf("Processing %zu UTF-8 code units: [ ", in_sz);
    for(size_t n = 0; n < in_sz; ++n) printf("%#x ", (unsigned char)in[n]);
    puts("]");
 
    wchar_t out[in_sz];
    char *p_in = in, *end = in + in_sz;
    wchar_t *p_out = out;
    int rc;
    while((rc = mbrtowc(p_out, p_in, end - p_in, &state)) > 0)
    {
        p_in += rc;
        p_out += 1;
    }
 
    size_t out_sz = p_out - out + 1;
    printf("into %zu wchar_t units: [ ", out_sz);
    for(size_t x = 0; x < out_sz; ++x) printf("%#x ", out[x]);
    puts("]");
}

Output:

Processing 11 UTF-8 code units: [ 0x7a 0xc3 0x9f 0xe6 0xb0 0xb4 0xf0 0x9f 0x8d 0x8c 0 ]
into 5 wchar_t units: [ 0x7a 0xdf 0x6c34 0x1f34c 0 ]

References

• C11 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2011):

• 7.29.6.3.2 The mbrtowc function (p: 443)

• C99 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1999):

• 7.24.6.3.2 The mbrtowc function (p: 389)

See also

mbtowc	converts the next multibyte character to wide character (function)
wcrtombwcrtomb_s (C95)(C11)	converts a wide character to its multibyte representation, given state (function)
C++ documentation for mbrtowc