mbstowcs()

convert multibyte characters to wide characters

Synopsis:

#include <stdlib.h>
size_t mbstowcs( wchar_t *pwcs,
                 const char *s,
                 size_t n );

Description:

The mbstowcs() function converts a sequence of multibyte characters pointed to by s into their corresponding wide-character codes, and stores not more than n codes into the array pointed to by pwcs. The mbstowcs() function doesn't convert any multibyte characters beyond the null character. At most n elements of the array pointed to by pwcs will be modified.

Returns:

If an invalid multibyte character is encountered, the mbstowcs() function returns (size_t)-1. Otherwise, the mbstowcs() function returns the number of array elements modified, not including the terminating zero code, if present.

Examples:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

void main()
  {
    char    *wc = "string";
    wchar_t wbuffer[50];
    int     i, len;

    len = mbstowcs( wbuffer, wc, 50 );
    if( len != -1 ) {
      wbuffer[len] = '\0';
      printf( "%s(%d)\n", wc, len );
      for( i = 0; i < len; i++ )
        printf( "/%4.4x", wbuffer[i] );
      printf( "\n" );
    }
  }

produces the output:

string(6)
/0073/0074/0072/0069/006e/0067

Classification:

ANSI

See also:

mblen(), mbtowc(), wctomb(), wcstombs()