mblen - determine number of bytes in next multibyte character
Standard C library (libc
, -lc
)
#include <stdlib.h>
int mblen(const char s[.n], size_t n);
If s
is not NULL, the mblen() function
inspects at most n
bytes of the multibyte string starting at
s
and extracts the next complete 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 consumed 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 character, 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 NULL, 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.
The mblen() function returns the number of bytes
parsed from the multibyte sequence starting at s
, if a non-null
wide character was recognized. 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.
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
Interface | Attribute | Value |
mblen() |
Thread safety | MT-Unsafe race |
The function mbrlen(3) provides a better interface to the same functionality.
C11, POSIX.1-2008.
POSIX.1-2001, C99.
The behavior of mblen() depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale.
mbrlen(3)