iconv(3p) — Linux manual page

PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | EXAMPLES | APPLICATION USAGE | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT

ICONV(3P)               POSIX Programmer's Manual              ICONV(3P)

PROLOG         top

       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The
       Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
       corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior),
       or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME         top

       iconv — codeset conversion function

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <iconv.h>

       size_t iconv(iconv_t cd, char **restrict inbuf,
           size_t *restrict inbytesleft, char **restrict outbuf,
           size_t *restrict outbytesleft);

DESCRIPTION         top

       The iconv() function shall convert the sequence of characters
       from one codeset, in the array specified by inbuf, into a
       sequence of corresponding characters in another codeset, in the
       array specified by outbuf.  The codesets are those specified in
       the iconv_open() call that returned the conversion descriptor,
       cd.  The inbuf argument points to a variable that points to the
       first character in the input buffer and inbytesleft indicates the
       number of bytes to the end of the buffer to be converted. The
       outbuf argument points to a variable that points to the first
       available byte in the output buffer and outbytesleft indicates
       the number of the available bytes to the end of the buffer.

       For state-dependent encodings, the conversion descriptor cd is
       placed into its initial shift state by a call for which inbuf is
       a null pointer, or for which inbuf points to a null pointer. When
       iconv() is called in this way, and if outbuf is not a null
       pointer or a pointer to a null pointer, and outbytesleft points
       to a positive value, iconv() shall place, into the output buffer,
       the byte sequence to change the output buffer to its initial
       shift state. If the output buffer is not large enough to hold the
       entire reset sequence, iconv() shall fail and set errno to
       [E2BIG].  Subsequent calls with inbuf as other than a null
       pointer or a pointer to a null pointer cause the conversion to
       take place from the current state of the conversion descriptor.

       If a sequence of input bytes does not form a valid character in
       the specified codeset, conversion shall stop after the previous
       successfully converted character. If the input buffer ends with
       an incomplete character or shift sequence, conversion shall stop
       after the previous successfully converted bytes. If the output
       buffer is not large enough to hold the entire converted input,
       conversion shall stop just prior to the input bytes that would
       cause the output buffer to overflow. The variable pointed to by
       inbuf shall be updated to point to the byte following the last
       byte successfully used in the conversion. The value pointed to by
       inbytesleft shall be decremented to reflect the number of bytes
       still not converted in the input buffer. The variable pointed to
       by outbuf shall be updated to point to the byte following the
       last byte of converted output data. The value pointed to by
       outbytesleft shall be decremented to reflect the number of bytes
       still available in the output buffer. For state-dependent
       encodings, the conversion descriptor shall be updated to reflect
       the shift state in effect at the end of the last successfully
       converted byte sequence.

       If iconv() encounters a character in the input buffer that is
       valid, but for which an identical character does not exist in the
       target codeset, iconv() shall perform an implementation-defined
       conversion on this character.

RETURN VALUE         top

       The iconv() function shall update the variables pointed to by the
       arguments to reflect the extent of the conversion and return the
       number of non-identical conversions performed. If the entire
       string in the input buffer is converted, the value pointed to by
       inbytesleft shall be 0. If the input conversion is stopped due to
       any conditions mentioned above, the value pointed to by
       inbytesleft shall be non-zero and errno shall be set to indicate
       the condition. If an error occurs, iconv() shall return
       (size_t)-1 and set errno to indicate the error.

ERRORS         top

       The iconv() function shall fail if:

       EILSEQ Input conversion stopped due to an input byte that does
              not belong to the input codeset.

       E2BIG  Input conversion stopped due to lack of space in the
              output buffer.

       EINVAL Input conversion stopped due to an incomplete character or
              shift sequence at the end of the input buffer.

       The iconv() function may fail if:

       EBADF  The cd argument is not a valid open conversion descriptor.

       The following sections are informative.

EXAMPLES         top

       None.

APPLICATION USAGE         top

       The inbuf argument indirectly points to the memory area which
       contains the conversion input data. The outbuf argument
       indirectly points to the memory area which is to contain the
       result of the conversion. The objects indirectly pointed to by
       inbuf and outbuf are not restricted to containing data that is
       directly representable in the ISO C standard language char data
       type. The type of inbuf and outbuf, char **, does not imply that
       the objects pointed to are interpreted as null-terminated C
       strings or arrays of characters. Any interpretation of a byte
       sequence that represents a character in a given character set
       encoding scheme is done internally within the codeset converters.
       For example, the area pointed to indirectly by inbuf and/or
       outbuf can contain all zero octets that are not interpreted as
       string terminators but as coded character data according to the
       respective codeset encoding scheme. The type of the data (char,
       short, long, and so on) read or stored in the objects is not
       specified, but may be inferred for both the input and output data
       by the converters determined by the fromcode and tocode arguments
       of iconv_open().

       Regardless of the data type inferred by the converter, the size
       of the remaining space in both input and output objects (the
       intbytesleft and outbytesleft arguments) is always measured in
       bytes.

       For implementations that support the conversion of state-
       dependent encodings, the conversion descriptor must be able to
       accurately reflect the shift-state in effect at the end of the
       last successful conversion. It is not required that the
       conversion descriptor itself be updated, which would require it
       to be a pointer type. Thus, implementations are free to implement
       the descriptor as a handle (other than a pointer type) by which
       the conversion information can be accessed and updated.

RATIONALE         top

       None.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS         top

       None.

SEE ALSO         top

       iconv_open(3p), iconv_close(3p), mbsrtowcs(3p)

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, iconv.h(0p)

COPYRIGHT         top

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic
       form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The
       Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright
       (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
       Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.  In the event of any
       discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The
       Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group
       Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be
       obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page
       are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of
       the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .

IEEE/The Open Group               2017                         ICONV(3P)

Pages that refer to this page: iconv.h(0p)iconv_close(3p)iconv_open(3p)mbsrtowcs(3p)