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| <h3 class="section">6.3 Restartable Multibyte Conversion Functions</h3> |
| |
| <p>The ISO C<!-- /@w --> standard defines functions to convert strings from a |
| multibyte representation to wide character strings. There are a number |
| of peculiarities: |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li>The character set assumed for the multibyte encoding is not specified |
| as an argument to the functions. Instead the character set specified by |
| the <code>LC_CTYPE</code> category of the current locale is used; see |
| <a href="Locale-Categories.html#Locale-Categories">Locale Categories</a>. |
| |
| <li>The functions handling more than one character at a time require NUL |
| terminated strings as the argument (i.e., converting blocks of text |
| does not work unless one can add a NUL byte at an appropriate place). |
| The GNU C library contains some extensions to the standard that allow |
| specifying a size, but basically they also expect terminated strings. |
| </ul> |
| |
| <p>Despite these limitations the ISO C<!-- /@w --> functions can be used in many |
| contexts. In graphical user interfaces, for instance, it is not |
| uncommon to have functions that require text to be displayed in a wide |
| character string if the text is not simple ASCII. The text itself might |
| come from a file with translations and the user should decide about the |
| current locale, which determines the translation and therefore also the |
| external encoding used. In such a situation (and many others) the |
| functions described here are perfect. If more freedom while performing |
| the conversion is necessary take a look at the <code>iconv</code> functions |
| (see <a href="Generic-Charset-Conversion.html#Generic-Charset-Conversion">Generic Charset Conversion</a>). |
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| <ul class="menu"> |
| <li><a accesskey="1" href="Selecting-the-Conversion.html#Selecting-the-Conversion">Selecting the Conversion</a>: Selecting the conversion and its properties. |
| <li><a accesskey="2" href="Keeping-the-state.html#Keeping-the-state">Keeping the state</a>: Representing the state of the conversion. |
| <li><a accesskey="3" href="Converting-a-Character.html#Converting-a-Character">Converting a Character</a>: Converting Single Characters. |
| <li><a accesskey="4" href="Converting-Strings.html#Converting-Strings">Converting Strings</a>: Converting Multibyte and Wide Character |
| Strings. |
| <li><a accesskey="5" href="Multibyte-Conversion-Example.html#Multibyte-Conversion-Example">Multibyte Conversion Example</a>: A Complete Multibyte Conversion Example. |
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