wcstombs(3)

wcstombs3

Convert a wide-character string to a character string

Usage

#include <stdlib.h>

size_t

wcstombs(char * restrict mbstring, const wchar_t * restrict wcstring, size_t nbytes);

Library

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

Overview

The wcstombs() function converts a wide character string wcstring into a multibyte character string, mbstring, beginning in the initial conversion state. Up to nbytes bytes are stored in mbstring. Partial multibyte characters at the end of the string are not stored. The multibyte character string is null terminated if there is room.

Return values

The wcstombs() function returns the number of bytes converted (not including any terminating null), if successful, otherwise it returns (size_t)-1.

Errors

The wcstombs() function will fail if:

[EILSEQ]

An invalid wide character was encountered.

[EINVAL]

The conversion state is invalid.

Releases

83 releases since FreeBSD 2.2.2-RELEASE; the text changed 44 times.

  1. 2.2.2
  2. 2.2.5–3.4
  3. 3.5–3.5.1
  4. 4.0
  5. 4.1–4.2
  6. 4.3
  7. 4.4
  8. 4.5–4.11
  9. 5.0
  10. 5.1
  11. 5.2–5.2.1
  12. 5.3–6.3
  13. 6.4
  14. 7.0
  15. 7.1
  16. 7.2
  17. 7.3
  18. 7.4
  19. 8.0
  20. 8.1
  21. 8.2
  22. 8.3
  23. 8.4
  24. 9.0
  25. 9.1
  26. 9.2
  27. 9.3
  28. 10.0
  29. 10.1
  30. 10.2
  31. 10.3
  32. 10.4
  33. 11.0
  34. 11.1
  35. 11.2
  36. 11.3
  37. 11.4
  38. 12.0
  39. 12.1
  40. 12.2
  41. 12.3
  42. 12.4
  43. 13.0–13.2
  44. 13.3–14.5
  45. 15.0–16.0

Standards

The wcstombs() function conforms to ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (“ISO C99”).

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.