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Name

Synopsis

#include <wchar.h>
int mbsinit(const mbstate_t *ps);

Description

The initial state is the state at the beginning of conversion of a string. There are two kinds of state: The one used by multibyte to wide character conversion functions, such as mbsrtowcs(3) , and the one used by wide character to multibyte conversion functions, such as wcsrtombs(3) , but they both fit in a mbstate_t, and they both have the same representation for an initial state.

For 8-bit encodings, all states are equivalent to the initial state. For multibyte encodings like UTF-8, EUC-*, BIG5 or SJIS, the wide character to multibyte conversion functions never produce non-initial states, but the multibyte to wide-character conversion functions like mbrtowc(3) do produce non-initial states when interrupted in the middle of a character.

One possible way to create an mbstate_t in initial state is to set it to zero:

    mbstate_t state;
    memset(&state,0,sizeof(mbstate_t));

On Linux, the following works as well, but might generate compiler warnings:

    mbstate_t state = { 0 };

The function mbsinit() tests whether *ps corresponds to an initial state.

Return Value

Attributes

Multithreading (see pthreads(7) )

Conforming to

Notes

See Also

Colophon

Table of Contents

• Name
• Synopsis
• Description
• Return Value
• Attributes
• Multithreading (see pthreads(7))
• Conforming to
• Notes
• See Also
• Colophon