1 .\" Copyright (c) Bruno Haible <haible@clisp.cons.org>
3 .\" %%%LICENSE_START(GPLv2+_DOC_ONEPARA)
4 .\" This is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or
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10 .\" References consulted:
11 .\" GNU glibc-2 source code and manual
12 .\" Dinkumware C library reference http://www.dinkumware.com/
13 .\" OpenGroup's Single UNIX specification http://www.UNIX-systems.org/online.html
16 .TH MBSINIT 3 2014-03-18 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
18 mbsinit \- test for initial shift state
23 .BI "int mbsinit(const mbstate_t *" ps );
26 Character conversion between the multibyte representation and the wide
27 character representation uses conversion state, of type
29 Conversion of a string uses a finite-state machine; when it is interrupted
30 after the complete conversion of a number of characters, it may need to
31 save a state for processing the remaining characters.
33 state is needed for the sake of encodings such as ISO-2022 and UTF-7.
35 The initial state is the state at the beginning of conversion of a string.
36 There are two kinds of state: The one used by multibyte to wide character
37 conversion functions, such as
39 and the one used by wide
40 character to multibyte conversion functions, such as
42 but they both fit in a
44 and they both have the same
45 representation for an initial state.
47 For 8-bit encodings, all states are equivalent to the initial state.
48 For multibyte encodings like UTF-8, EUC-*, BIG5 or SJIS, the wide character
49 to multibyte conversion functions never produce non-initial states, but the
50 multibyte to wide-character conversion functions like
53 produce non-initial states when interrupted in the middle of a character.
55 One possible way to create an
57 in initial state is to set it to zero:
61 memset(&state,0,sizeof(mbstate_t));
64 On Linux, the following works as well, but might generate compiler warnings:
67 mbstate_t state = { 0 };
80 is an initial state, or if
83 Otherwise, it returns 0.
85 .SS Multithreading (see pthreads(7))
88 function is thread-safe.