GNU Info
(libc.info)Converting a Character
Converting Single Characters
----------------------------
The most fundamental of the conversion functions are those dealing
with single characters. Please note that this does not always mean
single bytes. But since there is very often a subset of the multibyte
character set that consists of single byte sequences, there are
functions to help with converting bytes. Frequently, ASCII is a subpart
of the multibyte character set. In such a scenario, each ASCII
character stands for itself, and all other characters have at least a
first byte that is beyond the range 0 to 127.
- Function: wint_t btowc (int C)
The `btowc' function ("byte to wide character") converts a valid
single byte character C in the initial shift state into the wide
character equivalent using the conversion rules from the currently
selected locale of the `LC_CTYPE' category.
If `(unsigned char) C' is no valid single byte multibyte character
or if C is `EOF', the function returns `WEOF'.
Please note the restriction of C being tested for validity only in
the initial shift state. No `mbstate_t' object is used from which
the state information is taken, and the function also does not use
any static state.
The `btowc' function was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and
is declared in `wchar.h'.
Despite the limitation that the single byte value always is
interpreted in the initial state this function is actually useful most
of the time. Most characters are either entirely single-byte character
sets or they are extension to ASCII. But then it is possible to write
code like this (not that this specific example is very useful):
wchar_t *
itow (unsigned long int val)
{
static wchar_t buf[30];
wchar_t *wcp = &buf[29];
*wcp = L'\0';
while (val != 0)
{
*--wcp = btowc ('0' + val % 10);
val /= 10;
}
if (wcp == &buf[29])
*--wcp = L'0';
return wcp;
}
Why is it necessary to use such a complicated implementation and not
simply cast `'0' + val % 10' to a wide character? The answer is that
there is no guarantee that one can perform this kind of arithmetic on
the character of the character set used for `wchar_t' representation.
In other situations the bytes are not constant at compile time and so
the compiler cannot do the work. In situations like this it is
necessary `btowc'.
There also is a function for the conversion in the other direction.
- Function: int wctob (wint_t C)
The `wctob' function ("wide character to byte") takes as the
parameter a valid wide character. If the multibyte representation
for this character in the initial state is exactly one byte long,
the return value of this function is this character. Otherwise
the return value is `EOF'.
`wctob' was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and is declared
in `wchar.h'.
There are more general functions to convert single character from
multibyte representation to wide characters and vice versa. These
functions pose no limit on the length of the multibyte representation
and they also do not require it to be in the initial state.
- Function: size_t mbrtowc (wchar_t *restrict PWC, const char
*restrict S, size_t N, mbstate_t *restrict PS)
The `mbrtowc' function ("multibyte restartable to wide character")
converts the next multibyte character in the string pointed to by
S into a wide character and stores it in the wide character string
pointed to by PWC. The conversion is performed according to the
locale currently selected for the `LC_CTYPE' category. If the
conversion for the character set used in the locale requires a
state, the multibyte string is interpreted in the state
represented by the object pointed to by PS. If PS is a null
pointer, a static, internal state variable used only by the
`mbrtowc' function is used.
If the next multibyte character corresponds to the NUL wide
character, the return value of the function is 0 and the state
object is afterwards in the initial state. If the next N or fewer
bytes form a correct multibyte character, the return value is the
number of bytes starting from S that form the multibyte character.
The conversion state is updated according to the bytes consumed
in the conversion. In both cases the wide character (either the
`L'\0'' or the one found in the conversion) is stored in the
string pointed to by PWC if PWC is not null.
If the first N bytes of the multibyte string possibly form a valid
multibyte character but there are more than N bytes needed to
complete it, the return value of the function is `(size_t) -2' and
no value is stored. Please note that this can happen even if N
has a value greater than or equal to `MB_CUR_MAX' since the input
might contain redundant shift sequences.
If the first `n' bytes of the multibyte string cannot possibly form
a valid multibyte character, no value is stored, the global
variable `errno' is set to the value `EILSEQ', and the function
returns `(size_t) -1'. The conversion state is afterwards
undefined.
`mbrtowc' was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and is declared
in `wchar.h'.
Use of `mbrtowc' is straightforward. A function that copies a
multibyte string into a wide character string while at the same time
converting all lowercase characters into uppercase could look like this
(this is not the final version, just an example; it has no error
checking, and sometimes leaks memory):
wchar_t *
mbstouwcs (const char *s)
{
size_t len = strlen (s);
wchar_t *result = malloc ((len + 1) * sizeof (wchar_t));
wchar_t *wcp = result;
wchar_t tmp[1];
mbstate_t state;
size_t nbytes;
memset (&state, '\0', sizeof (state));
while ((nbytes = mbrtowc (tmp, s, len, &state)) > 0)
{
if (nbytes >= (size_t) -2)
/* Invalid input string. */
return NULL;
*result++ = towupper (tmp[0]);
len -= nbytes;
s += nbytes;
}
return result;
}
The use of `mbrtowc' should be clear. A single wide character is
stored in `TMP[0]', and the number of consumed bytes is stored in the
variable NBYTES. If the conversion is successful, the uppercase
variant of the wide character is stored in the RESULT array and the
pointer to the input string and the number of available bytes is
adjusted.
The only non-obvious thing about `mbrtowc' might be the way memory
is allocated for the result. The above code uses the fact that there
can never be more wide characters in the converted results than there
are bytes in the multibyte input string. This method yields a
pessimistic guess about the size of the result, and if many wide
character strings have to be constructed this way or if the strings are
long, the extra memory required to be allocated because the input
string contains multibyte characters might be significant. The
allocated memory block can be resized to the correct size before
returning it, but a better solution might be to allocate just the right
amount of space for the result right away. Unfortunately there is no
function to compute the length of the wide character string directly
from the multibyte string. There is, however, a function that does
part of the work.
- Function: size_t mbrlen (const char *restrict S, size_t N, mbstate_t
*PS)
The `mbrlen' function ("multibyte restartable length") computes
the number of at most N bytes starting at S, which form the next
valid and complete multibyte character.
If the next multibyte character corresponds to the NUL wide
character, the return value is 0. If the next N bytes form a valid
multibyte character, the number of bytes belonging to this
multibyte character byte sequence is returned.
If the the first N bytes possibly form a valid multibyte character
but the character is incomplete, the return value is `(size_t)
-2'. Otherwise the multibyte character sequence is invalid and
the return value is `(size_t) -1'.
The multibyte sequence is interpreted in the state represented by
the object pointed to by PS. If PS is a null pointer, a state
object local to `mbrlen' is used.
`mbrlen' was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and is declared
in `wchar.h'.
The attentive reader now will note that `mbrlen' can be implemented
as
mbrtowc (NULL, s, n, ps != NULL ? ps : &internal)
This is true and in fact is mentioned in the official specification.
How can this function be used to determine the length of the wide
character string created from a multibyte character string? It is not
directly usable, but we can define a function `mbslen' using it:
size_t
mbslen (const char *s)
{
mbstate_t state;
size_t result = 0;
size_t nbytes;
memset (&state, '\0', sizeof (state));
while ((nbytes = mbrlen (s, MB_LEN_MAX, &state)) > 0)
{
if (nbytes >= (size_t) -2)
/* Something is wrong. */
return (size_t) -1;
s += nbytes;
++result;
}
return result;
}
This function simply calls `mbrlen' for each multibyte character in
the string and counts the number of function calls. Please note that
we here use `MB_LEN_MAX' as the size argument in the `mbrlen' call.
This is acceptable since a) this value is larger then the length of the
longest multibyte character sequence and b) we know that the string S
ends with a NUL byte, which cannot be part of any other multibyte
character sequence but the one representing the NUL wide character.
Therefore, the `mbrlen' function will never read invalid memory.
Now that this function is available (just to make this clear, this
function is _not_ part of the GNU C library) we can compute the number
of wide character required to store the converted multibyte character
string S using
wcs_bytes = (mbslen (s) + 1) * sizeof (wchar_t);
Please note that the `mbslen' function is quite inefficient. The
implementation of `mbstouwcs' with `mbslen' would have to perform the
conversion of the multibyte character input string twice, and this
conversion might be quite expensive. So it is necessary to think about
the consequences of using the easier but imprecise method before doing
the work twice.
- Function: size_t wcrtomb (char *restrict S, wchar_t WC, mbstate_t
*restrict PS)
The `wcrtomb' function ("wide character restartable to multibyte")
converts a single wide character into a multibyte string
corresponding to that wide character.
If S is a null pointer, the function resets the state stored in
the objects pointed to by PS (or the internal `mbstate_t' object)
to the initial state. This can also be achieved by a call like
this:
wcrtombs (temp_buf, L'\0', ps)
since, if S is a null pointer, `wcrtomb' performs as if it writes
into an internal buffer, which is guaranteed to be large enough.
If WC is the NUL wide character, `wcrtomb' emits, if necessary, a
shift sequence to get the state PS into the initial state followed
by a single NUL byte, which is stored in the string S.
Otherwise a byte sequence (possibly including shift sequences) is
written into the string S. This only happens if WC is a valid wide
character (i.e., it has a multibyte representation in the
character set selected by locale of the `LC_CTYPE' category). If
WC is no valid wide character, nothing is stored in the strings S,
`errno' is set to `EILSEQ', the conversion state in PS is
undefined and the return value is `(size_t) -1'.
If no error occurred the function returns the number of bytes
stored in the string S. This includes all bytes representing shift
sequences.
One word about the interface of the function: there is no parameter
specifying the length of the array S. Instead the function
assumes that there are at least `MB_CUR_MAX' bytes available since
this is the maximum length of any byte sequence representing a
single character. So the caller has to make sure that there is
enough space available, otherwise buffer overruns can occur.
`wcrtomb' was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and is declared
in `wchar.h'.
Using `wcrtomb' is as easy as using `mbrtowc'. The following
example appends a wide character string to a multibyte character string.
Again, the code is not really useful (or correct), it is simply here to
demonstrate the use and some problems.
char *
mbscatwcs (char *s, size_t len, const wchar_t *ws)
{
mbstate_t state;
/* Find the end of the existing string. */
char *wp = strchr (s, '\0');
len -= wp - s;
memset (&state, '\0', sizeof (state));
do
{
size_t nbytes;
if (len < MB_CUR_LEN)
{
/* We cannot guarantee that the next
character fits into the buffer, so
return an error. */
errno = E2BIG;
return NULL;
}
nbytes = wcrtomb (wp, *ws, &state);
if (nbytes == (size_t) -1)
/* Error in the conversion. */
return NULL;
len -= nbytes;
wp += nbytes;
}
while (*ws++ != L'\0');
return s;
}
First the function has to find the end of the string currently in the
array S. The `strchr' call does this very efficiently since a
requirement for multibyte character representations is that the NUL byte
is never used except to represent itself (and in this context, the end
of the string).
After initializing the state object the loop is entered where the
first task is to make sure there is enough room in the array S. We
abort if there are not at least `MB_CUR_LEN' bytes available. This is
not always optimal but we have no other choice. We might have less
than `MB_CUR_LEN' bytes available but the next multibyte character
might also be only one byte long. At the time the `wcrtomb' call
returns it is too late to decide whether the buffer was large enough.
If this solution is unsuitable, there is a very slow but more accurate
solution.
...
if (len < MB_CUR_LEN)
{
mbstate_t temp_state;
memcpy (&temp_state, &state, sizeof (state));
if (wcrtomb (NULL, *ws, &temp_state) > len)
{
/* We cannot guarantee that the next
character fits into the buffer, so
return an error. */
errno = E2BIG;
return NULL;
}
}
...
Here we perform the conversion that might overflow the buffer so that
we are afterwards in the position to make an exact decision about the
buffer size. Please note the `NULL' argument for the destination
buffer in the new `wcrtomb' call; since we are not interested in the
converted text at this point, this is a nice way to express this. The
most unusual thing about this piece of code certainly is the duplication
of the conversion state object, but if a change of the state is
necessary to emit the next multibyte character, we want to have the
same shift state change performed in the real conversion. Therefore,
we have to preserve the initial shift state information.
There are certainly many more and even better solutions to this
problem. This example is only provided for educational purposes.
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