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MBLEN(3)                   Linux Programmer's Manual                  MBLEN(3)

NAME
       mblen - determine number of bytes in next multibyte character
SYNOPSIS
       #include <stdlib.h>
       int mblen(const char *s, size_t n);
DESCRIPTION
       If  s  is  not  a NULL pointer, the mblen() function inspects at most n
       bytes of the multibyte string starting at s and extracts the next  com-
       plete  multibyte  character.   It  uses  a static anonymous shift state
       known only to the mblen() function.  If the multibyte character is  not
       the  null wide character, it returns the number of bytes that were con-
       sumed from s.  If the multibyte character is the null  wide  character,
       it returns 0.
       If  the n bytes starting at s do not contain a complete multibyte char-
       acter, mblen() returns -1.  This can happen even if n is  greater  than
       or  equal  to  MB_CUR_MAX,  if  the multibyte string contains redundant
       shift sequences.
       If the multibyte string starting at s  contains  an  invalid  multibyte
       sequence before the next complete character, mblen() also returns -1.
       If  s  is  a NULL pointer, the mblen() function resets the shift state,
       known to only this function, to the initial state, and returns  nonzero
       if  the encoding has nontrivial shift state, or zero if the encoding is
       stateless.
RETURN VALUE
       The mblen() function returns the number of bytes parsed from the multi-
       byte  sequence  starting  at s, if a non-null wide character was recog-
       nized.  It returns 0, if a null  wide  character  was  recognized.   It
       returns  -1,  if an invalid multibyte sequence was encountered or if it
       couldn't parse a complete multibyte character.
ATTRIBUTES
   Multithreading (see pthreads(7))
       The mblen() function is not thread-safe.
CONFORMING TO
       C99.
NOTES
       The behavior of mblen() depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the current
       locale.
       The  function  mbrlen(3)  provides a better interface to the same func-
       tionality.
SEE ALSO
       mbrlen(3)
COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 3.53 of the Linux  man-pages  project.   A
       description  of  the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

GNU                               2013-06-21                          MBLEN(3)