The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6
IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition
Copyright © 2001-2004 The IEEE and The Open Group, All Rights reserved.

#### NAME

> mblen - get number of bytes in a character

#### SYNOPSIS

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

#### DESCRIPTION

> [CX] The functionality described on this reference page is aligned with the ISO C standard. Any conflict between the requirements described here and the ISO C standard is unintentional. This volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 defers to the ISO C standard.

> If s is not a null pointer, mblen() shall determine the number of bytes constituting the character pointed to by s. Except that the shift state of mbtowc() is not affected, it shall be equivalent to:

>     mbtowc((wchar_t *)0, s, n);

> The implementation shall behave as if no function defined in this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 calls mblen().

> The behavior of this function is affected by the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale. For a state-dependent encoding, this function shall be placed into its initial state by a call for which its character pointer argument, s, is a null pointer. Subsequent calls with s as other than a null pointer shall cause the internal state of the function to be altered as necessary. A call with s as a null pointer shall cause this function to return a non-zero value if encodings have state dependency, and 0 otherwise. If the implementation employs special bytes to change the shift state, these bytes shall not produce separate wide-character codes, but shall be grouped with an adjacent character. Changing the LC_CTYPE category causes the shift state of this function to be unspecified.

#### RETURN VALUE

> If s is a null pointer, mblen() shall return a non-zero or 0 value, if character encodings, respectively, do or do not have state-dependent encodings. If s is not a null pointer, mblen() shall either return 0 (if s points to the null byte), or return the number of bytes that constitute the character (if the next n or fewer bytes form a valid character), or return -1 (if they do not form a valid character) [CX] and may set errno to indicate the error. In no case shall the value returned be greater than n or the value of the {MB_CUR_MAX} macro.

#### ERRORS

> The mblen() function may fail if:

> [EILSEQ]
>   [XSI] Invalid character sequence is detected.

The following sections are informative.

#### EXAMPLES

> None.

#### APPLICATION USAGE

> None.

#### RATIONALE

> None.

#### FUTURE DIRECTIONS

> None.

#### SEE ALSO

> mbtowc(), mbstowcs(), wctomb(), wcstombs(), the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, <stdlib.h>

#### CHANGE HISTORY

> First released in Issue 4. Aligned with the ISO C standard.

End of informative text.

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