NAME

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

 SYNOPSIS

#include <stdlib.h>

size_t wcstombs(char *s, const wchar_t *pwcs, size_t n);

 DESCRIPTION

The wcstombs() function converts the sequence of wide-character codes that are in the array pointed to by pwcs into a sequence of characters that begins in the initial shift state and stores these characters into the array pointed to by s, stopping if a character would exceed the limit of n total bytes or if a null byte is stored. Each wide-character code is converted as if by a call to wctomb(), except that the shift state of wctomb() is not affected.

The behaviour of this function is affected by the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale.

No more than n bytes will be modified in the array pointed to by s. If copying takes place between objects that overlap, the behaviour is undefined. If s is a null pointer, wcstombs() returns the length required to convert the entire array regardless of the value of n, but no values are stored. function returns the number of bytes required for the character array.

 RETURN VALUE

If a wide-character code is encountered that does not correspond to a valid character (of one or more bytes each), wcstombs() returns (size_t)-1. Otherwise, wcstombs() returns the number of bytes stored in the character array, not including any terminating null byte. The array will not be null-terminated if the value returned is n.

 ERRORS

The wcstombs() function may fail if:

[EILSEQ]

A wide-character code does not correspond to a valid character.

 EXAMPLES

None.

 APPLICATION USAGE

None.

 FUTURE DIRECTIONS

None.

 SEE ALSO

mblen(), mbtowc(), mbstowcs(), wctomb(), <stdlib.h>.

DERIVATION

Derived from the ISO C standard.