mbtowc - Convert Multibyte Character to Wide Character

Syntax

#include <stdlib.h>
int mbtowc(wchar_t *pwc, const char *string, size_t n);

mbtowc first determines the length of the multibyte character pointed to by string. It then converts the multibyte character to the corresponding wide character, and stores it in the location pointed to by pwc, if pwc is not a null pointer. mbtowc examines a maximum of n bytes from string.

If pwc is a null pointer, the multibyte character is not converted.

The behavior of mbtowc is affected by the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale.

If string is NULL, mbtowc returns 0. If string is not NULL, mbtowc returns:

The number of bytes comprising the converted multibyte character, if n or fewer bytes form a valid multibyte character.
if string points to the null character.
if string does not point to a valid multibyte character, and the next n bytes do not form a valid multibyte character.

This example uses mbtowc to convert the second multibyte character in mbs to a wide character.

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

int main(void)
{
   char     mb_string[] = "\x81\x41\x81\x42" "c" "\x00";
   int      length;
   wchar_t  widechar;

   if (NULL == setlocale(LC_ALL, "ja_jp.ibm-932")) {
      printf("setlocale failed.\n");
      exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
   }
   length = mblen(mb_string, MB_CUR_MAX);
   length = mbtowc(&widechar, mb_string + length, MB_CUR_MAX);
   printf("The wide character %lc has length of %d.\n", widechar, length);
   return 0;

   /****************************************************************************
      The output should be similar to :

      The wide character žB has length of 2.
   ****************************************************************************/
}

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