mblen

determine the number of bytes comprising a multibyte character

Synopsis:

#include <stdlib.h>
int mblen( const char *s, size_t n );

Description:

The mblen() function determines the number of bytes comprising the multibyte character pointed to by s. At most n bytes of the array pointed to by s will be examined.

Returns:

If s is a NULL pointer, the mblen() function returns zero if multibyte character encodings do not have state-dependent encoding, and non-zero otherwise. If s is not a NULL pointer, the mblen() function returns:

0

if s points to the null character

len

the number of bytes that comprise the multibyte character (if the next n or fewer bytes form a valid multibyte character)

-1

if the next n bytes do not form a valid multibyte character

See also:

mbtowc(), mbstowcs(), wctomb(), wcstombs()

Examples:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

void main()
  {
    int     len;
    char    *mbs = "string";

    printf( "Character encodings do %shave "
        "state-dependent \nencoding.\n",
        ( mblen( NULL, 0 ) )
        ? "" : "not " );

    len = mblen( "string", 6 );
    if( len != -1 ) {
      mbs[len] = '\0';
      printf( "Multibyte char '%s'(%d)\n", mbs, len );
    }
  }

produces the output:

Character encodings do not have state-dependent 
encoding.
Multibyte char 's'(1)

Classification:

ANSI

Systems:

All (except DOS/PM)