redhat man page for mbrlen

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

NAME
       mbrlen - determine number of bytes in next multibyte character

SYNOPSIS
       #include <wchar.h>

       size_t mbrlen(const char *s, size_t n, mbstate_t *ps);

DESCRIPTION
       The  mbrlen function inspects at most n bytes of the multibyte string starting at s and extracts the next complete multibyte character.	It
       updates the shift state *ps. If the multibyte character is not the null wide character, it returns the number of bytes that  were  consumed
       from s. If the multibyte character is the null wide character, it resets the shift state *ps to the initial state and returns 0.

       If  the	n  bytes  starting  at	s do not contain a complete multibyte character, mbrlen returns (size_t)(-2). This can happen even if n >=
       MB_CUR_MAX, if the multibyte string contains redundant shift sequences.

       If the multibyte string starting at s  contains	an  invalid  multibyte	sequence  before  the  next  complete  character,  mbrlen  returns
       (size_t)(-1) and sets errno to EILSEQ. In this case, the effects on *ps are undefined.

       If ps is a NULL pointer, a static anonymous state only known to the mbrlen function is used instead.

RETURN VALUE
       The  mbrlen  function returns the number of bytes parsed from the multibyte sequence starting at s, if a non-null wide character was recog-
       nized.  It returns 0, if a null wide character was recognized. It returns (size_t)(-1) and sets errno to EILSEQ, if  an	invalid  multibyte
       sequence was encountered. It returns (size_t)(-2) if it couldn't parse a complete multibyte character, meaning that n should be increased.

CONFORMING TO
       ISO/ANSI C, UNIX98

SEE ALSO
       mbrtowc(3)

NOTES
       The behaviour of mbrlen depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale.

GNU
								    1999-07-25								 MBRLEN(3)