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.1‐2008, iconv.h(0p)

COPYRIGHT         top

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open
       Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
       Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open
       Group.  (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1
       applied.) 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.unix.org/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                 2013                           ICONV(3P)

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