wcwidth: Determine columns needed for a wide character

SYNOPSIS

#define _XOPEN_SOURCE       /* See feature_test_macros(7) */
#include <wchar.h>

int wcwidth(wchar_t c);

DESCRIPTION

The wcwidth() function returns the number of columns needed to represent the wide character c. If c is a printable wide character, the value is at least 0. If c is null wide character (L'\0'), the value is 0. Otherwise, -1 is returned.

RETURN VALUE

The wcwidth() function returns the number of column positions for c.

ATTRIBUTES

Multithreading (see pthreads(7))

The wcwidth() function is thread-safe with exceptions. It can be safely used in multithreaded applications, as long as setlocale(3) is not called to change the locale during its execution.

CONFORMING TO

POSIX.1-2001.

Note that glibc before 2.2.5 used the prototype

int wcwidth(wint_t c);

NOTES

The behavior of wcwidth() depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale.

RELATED TO wcwidth…

iswprint(3), wcswidth(3)

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 3.74 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

wcwidth (3)