linux man page for wcstombs

WCSTOMBS(3)						     Linux Programmer's Manual						       WCSTOMBS(3)

NAME
       wcstombs - convert a wide-character string to a multibyte string

SYNOPSIS
       #include <stdlib.h>

       size_t wcstombs(char *dest, const wchar_t *src, size_t n);

DESCRIPTION
       If  dest  is not a NULL pointer, the wcstombs() function converts the wide-character string src to a multibyte string starting at dest.	At
       most n bytes are written to dest.  The conversion starts in the initial state.  The conversion can stop for three reasons:

       1. A wide character has been encountered that can not be represented as a multibyte sequence (according to the current  locale).   In  this
       case (size_t) -1 is returned.

       2.  The	length	limit  forces  a stop.	In this case the number of bytes written to dest is returned, but the shift state at this point is
       lost.

       3. The wide-character string has been completely converted, including the terminating L''.  In this case the conversion ends in the  ini-
       tial state.  The number of bytes written to dest, excluding the terminating '' byte, is returned.

       The programmer must ensure that there is room for at least n bytes at dest.

       If  dest  is  NULL,  n is ignored, and the conversion proceeds as above, except that the converted bytes are not written out to memory, and
       that no length limit exists.

       In order to avoid the case 2 above, the programmer should make sure n is greater or equal to wcstombs(NULL,src,0)+1.

RETURN VALUE
       The wcstombs() function returns the number of bytes that make up the converted part of multibyte sequence, not  including  the  terminating
       null byte.  If a wide character was encountered which could not be converted, (size_t) -1 is returned.

CONFORMING TO
       C99.

NOTES
       The behavior of wcstombs() depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale.

       The function wcsrtombs(3) provides a thread safe interface to the same functionality.

SEE ALSO
       wcsrtombs(3)

COLOPHON
       This  page is part of release 3.27 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

GNU
								    1999-07-25							       WCSTOMBS(3)