getwchar - Get Wide Character from stdin

Syntax

#include <wchar.h>
wint_t getwchar(void);

getwchar reads the next multibyte character from stdin, converts it to a wide character, and advances the associated file position indicator for stdin. A call to getwchar is equivalent to a call to getwc(stdin).

The behavior of getwchar is affected by the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale. If you change the category between subsequent read operations on the same stream, undefined results can occur.

getwchar returns the next wide character from stdin or WEOF. If getwchar encounters EOF, it sets the EOF indicator for the stream and returns WEOF. If a read error occurs, the error indicator for the stream is set and getwchar returns WEOF. If an encoding error occurs during the conversion of the multibyte character to a wide character, getwchar sets errno to EILSEQ and returns WEOF.

Use ferror or feof to determine whether an error or an EOF condition occurred. EOF is only reached when an attempt is made to read past the last byte of data. Reading up to and including the last byte of data does not turn on the EOF indicator.

This example uses getwchar to read wide characters from the keyboard, then prints the wide characters.

#include <errno.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <wchar.h>

int main(void)
{
   wint_t  wc;

   errno = 0;
   while (WEOF != (wc = getwchar()))
      printf("wc = %lc\n", wc);

   if (EILSEQ == errno) {
      printf("An invalid wide character was encountered.\n");
      exit(1);
   }
   return 0;

   /****************************************************************************
      Assuming you enter: abcde^Z                        (note: ^Z is CNTRL-Z)

      The output should be:

      wc = a
      wc = b
      wc = c
      wc = d
      wc = e
   ****************************************************************************/
}

[Back]

[Next]