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)