This is libc.info, produced by makeinfo version 5.2 from libc.texinfo.

This file documents the GNU C Library.

   This is ‘The GNU C Library Reference Manual’, for version 2.25.

   Copyright © 1993–2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

   Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
Invariant Sections being “Free Software Needs Free Documentation” and
“GNU Lesser General Public License”, the Front-Cover texts being “A GNU
Manual”, and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below.  A copy of the
license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation
License".

   (a) The FSF’s Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to copy and
modify this GNU manual.  Buying copies from the FSF supports it in
developing GNU and promoting software freedom.”
INFO-DIR-SECTION Software libraries
START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
* Libc: (libc).                 C library.
END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY

INFO-DIR-SECTION GNU C library functions and macros
START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
* a64l: (libc)Encode Binary Data.
* abort: (libc)Aborting a Program.
* abs: (libc)Absolute Value.
* accept: (libc)Accepting Connections.
* access: (libc)Testing File Access.
* acosf: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* acoshf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* acosh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* acoshl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* acos: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* acosl: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* addmntent: (libc)mtab.
* addseverity: (libc)Adding Severity Classes.
* adjtime: (libc)High-Resolution Calendar.
* adjtimex: (libc)High-Resolution Calendar.
* aio_cancel64: (libc)Cancel AIO Operations.
* aio_cancel: (libc)Cancel AIO Operations.
* aio_error64: (libc)Status of AIO Operations.
* aio_error: (libc)Status of AIO Operations.
* aio_fsync64: (libc)Synchronizing AIO Operations.
* aio_fsync: (libc)Synchronizing AIO Operations.
* aio_init: (libc)Configuration of AIO.
* aio_read64: (libc)Asynchronous Reads/Writes.
* aio_read: (libc)Asynchronous Reads/Writes.
* aio_return64: (libc)Status of AIO Operations.
* aio_return: (libc)Status of AIO Operations.
* aio_suspend64: (libc)Synchronizing AIO Operations.
* aio_suspend: (libc)Synchronizing AIO Operations.
* aio_write64: (libc)Asynchronous Reads/Writes.
* aio_write: (libc)Asynchronous Reads/Writes.
* alarm: (libc)Setting an Alarm.
* aligned_alloc: (libc)Aligned Memory Blocks.
* alloca: (libc)Variable Size Automatic.
* alphasort64: (libc)Scanning Directory Content.
* alphasort: (libc)Scanning Directory Content.
* ALTWERASE: (libc)Local Modes.
* ARG_MAX: (libc)General Limits.
* argp_error: (libc)Argp Helper Functions.
* ARGP_ERR_UNKNOWN: (libc)Argp Parser Functions.
* argp_failure: (libc)Argp Helper Functions.
* argp_help: (libc)Argp Help.
* argp_parse: (libc)Argp.
* argp_state_help: (libc)Argp Helper Functions.
* argp_usage: (libc)Argp Helper Functions.
* argz_add: (libc)Argz Functions.
* argz_add_sep: (libc)Argz Functions.
* argz_append: (libc)Argz Functions.
* argz_count: (libc)Argz Functions.
* argz_create: (libc)Argz Functions.
* argz_create_sep: (libc)Argz Functions.
* argz_delete: (libc)Argz Functions.
* argz_extract: (libc)Argz Functions.
* argz_insert: (libc)Argz Functions.
* argz_next: (libc)Argz Functions.
* argz_replace: (libc)Argz Functions.
* argz_stringify: (libc)Argz Functions.
* asctime: (libc)Formatting Calendar Time.
* asctime_r: (libc)Formatting Calendar Time.
* asinf: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* asinhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* asinh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* asinhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* asin: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* asinl: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* asprintf: (libc)Dynamic Output.
* assert: (libc)Consistency Checking.
* assert_perror: (libc)Consistency Checking.
* atan2f: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* atan2: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* atan2l: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* atanf: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* atanhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* atanh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* atanhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* atan: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* atanl: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* atexit: (libc)Cleanups on Exit.
* atof: (libc)Parsing of Floats.
* atoi: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* atol: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* atoll: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* backtrace: (libc)Backtraces.
* backtrace_symbols_fd: (libc)Backtraces.
* backtrace_symbols: (libc)Backtraces.
* basename: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String.
* basename: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String.
* BC_BASE_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits.
* BC_DIM_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits.
* bcmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison.
* bcopy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* BC_SCALE_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits.
* BC_STRING_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits.
* bind: (libc)Setting Address.
* bind_textdomain_codeset: (libc)Charset conversion in gettext.
* bindtextdomain: (libc)Locating gettext catalog.
* BRKINT: (libc)Input Modes.
* brk: (libc)Resizing the Data Segment.
* bsearch: (libc)Array Search Function.
* btowc: (libc)Converting a Character.
* BUFSIZ: (libc)Controlling Buffering.
* bzero: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* cabsf: (libc)Absolute Value.
* cabs: (libc)Absolute Value.
* cabsl: (libc)Absolute Value.
* cacosf: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* cacoshf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* cacosh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* cacoshl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* cacos: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* cacosl: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* calloc: (libc)Allocating Cleared Space.
* canonicalize_file_name: (libc)Symbolic Links.
* canonicalizef: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* canonicalize: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* canonicalizel: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* cargf: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* carg: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* cargl: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* casinf: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* casinhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* casinh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* casinhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* casin: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* casinl: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* catanf: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* catanhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* catanh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* catanhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* catan: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* catanl: (libc)Inverse Trig Functions.
* catclose: (libc)The catgets Functions.
* catgets: (libc)The catgets Functions.
* catopen: (libc)The catgets Functions.
* cbc_crypt: (libc)DES Encryption.
* cbrtf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* cbrt: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* cbrtl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* ccosf: (libc)Trig Functions.
* ccoshf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* ccosh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* ccoshl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* ccos: (libc)Trig Functions.
* ccosl: (libc)Trig Functions.
* CCTS_OFLOW: (libc)Control Modes.
* ceilf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* ceil: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* ceill: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* cexpf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* cexp: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* cexpl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* cfgetispeed: (libc)Line Speed.
* cfgetospeed: (libc)Line Speed.
* cfmakeraw: (libc)Noncanonical Input.
* cfree: (libc)Freeing after Malloc.
* cfsetispeed: (libc)Line Speed.
* cfsetospeed: (libc)Line Speed.
* cfsetspeed: (libc)Line Speed.
* chdir: (libc)Working Directory.
* CHILD_MAX: (libc)General Limits.
* chmod: (libc)Setting Permissions.
* chown: (libc)File Owner.
* CIGNORE: (libc)Control Modes.
* cimagf: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* cimag: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* cimagl: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* clearenv: (libc)Environment Access.
* clearerr: (libc)Error Recovery.
* clearerr_unlocked: (libc)Error Recovery.
* CLK_TCK: (libc)Processor Time.
* CLOCAL: (libc)Control Modes.
* clock: (libc)CPU Time.
* CLOCKS_PER_SEC: (libc)CPU Time.
* clog10f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* clog10: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* clog10l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* clogf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* clog: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* clogl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* closedir: (libc)Reading/Closing Directory.
* close: (libc)Opening and Closing Files.
* closelog: (libc)closelog.
* COLL_WEIGHTS_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits.
* _Complex_I: (libc)Complex Numbers.
* confstr: (libc)String Parameters.
* conjf: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* conj: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* conjl: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* connect: (libc)Connecting.
* copysignf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* copysign: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* copysignl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* cosf: (libc)Trig Functions.
* coshf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* cosh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* coshl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* cos: (libc)Trig Functions.
* cosl: (libc)Trig Functions.
* cpowf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* cpow: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* cpowl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* cprojf: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* cproj: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* cprojl: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* CPU_CLR: (libc)CPU Affinity.
* CPU_ISSET: (libc)CPU Affinity.
* CPU_SET: (libc)CPU Affinity.
* CPU_SETSIZE: (libc)CPU Affinity.
* CPU_ZERO: (libc)CPU Affinity.
* CREAD: (libc)Control Modes.
* crealf: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* creal: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* creall: (libc)Operations on Complex.
* creat64: (libc)Opening and Closing Files.
* creat: (libc)Opening and Closing Files.
* CRTS_IFLOW: (libc)Control Modes.
* crypt: (libc)crypt.
* crypt_r: (libc)crypt.
* CS5: (libc)Control Modes.
* CS6: (libc)Control Modes.
* CS7: (libc)Control Modes.
* CS8: (libc)Control Modes.
* csinf: (libc)Trig Functions.
* csinhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* csinh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* csinhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* csin: (libc)Trig Functions.
* csinl: (libc)Trig Functions.
* CSIZE: (libc)Control Modes.
* csqrtf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* csqrt: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* csqrtl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* CSTOPB: (libc)Control Modes.
* ctanf: (libc)Trig Functions.
* ctanhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* ctanh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* ctanhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* ctan: (libc)Trig Functions.
* ctanl: (libc)Trig Functions.
* ctermid: (libc)Identifying the Terminal.
* ctime: (libc)Formatting Calendar Time.
* ctime_r: (libc)Formatting Calendar Time.
* cuserid: (libc)Who Logged In.
* dcgettext: (libc)Translation with gettext.
* dcngettext: (libc)Advanced gettext functions.
* DES_FAILED: (libc)DES Encryption.
* des_setparity: (libc)DES Encryption.
* dgettext: (libc)Translation with gettext.
* difftime: (libc)Elapsed Time.
* dirfd: (libc)Opening a Directory.
* dirname: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String.
* div: (libc)Integer Division.
* dngettext: (libc)Advanced gettext functions.
* drand48: (libc)SVID Random.
* drand48_r: (libc)SVID Random.
* dremf: (libc)Remainder Functions.
* drem: (libc)Remainder Functions.
* dreml: (libc)Remainder Functions.
* DTTOIF: (libc)Directory Entries.
* dup2: (libc)Duplicating Descriptors.
* dup: (libc)Duplicating Descriptors.
* E2BIG: (libc)Error Codes.
* EACCES: (libc)Error Codes.
* EADDRINUSE: (libc)Error Codes.
* EADDRNOTAVAIL: (libc)Error Codes.
* EADV: (libc)Error Codes.
* EAFNOSUPPORT: (libc)Error Codes.
* EAGAIN: (libc)Error Codes.
* EALREADY: (libc)Error Codes.
* EAUTH: (libc)Error Codes.
* EBACKGROUND: (libc)Error Codes.
* EBADE: (libc)Error Codes.
* EBADFD: (libc)Error Codes.
* EBADF: (libc)Error Codes.
* EBADMSG: (libc)Error Codes.
* EBADR: (libc)Error Codes.
* EBADRPC: (libc)Error Codes.
* EBADRQC: (libc)Error Codes.
* EBADSLT: (libc)Error Codes.
* EBFONT: (libc)Error Codes.
* EBUSY: (libc)Error Codes.
* ECANCELED: (libc)Error Codes.
* ecb_crypt: (libc)DES Encryption.
* ECHILD: (libc)Error Codes.
* ECHOCTL: (libc)Local Modes.
* ECHOE: (libc)Local Modes.
* ECHOKE: (libc)Local Modes.
* ECHOK: (libc)Local Modes.
* ECHO: (libc)Local Modes.
* ECHONL: (libc)Local Modes.
* ECHOPRT: (libc)Local Modes.
* ECHRNG: (libc)Error Codes.
* ECOMM: (libc)Error Codes.
* ECONNABORTED: (libc)Error Codes.
* ECONNREFUSED: (libc)Error Codes.
* ECONNRESET: (libc)Error Codes.
* ecvt: (libc)System V Number Conversion.
* ecvt_r: (libc)System V Number Conversion.
* EDEADLK: (libc)Error Codes.
* EDEADLOCK: (libc)Error Codes.
* EDESTADDRREQ: (libc)Error Codes.
* EDIED: (libc)Error Codes.
* ED: (libc)Error Codes.
* EDOM: (libc)Error Codes.
* EDOTDOT: (libc)Error Codes.
* EDQUOT: (libc)Error Codes.
* EEXIST: (libc)Error Codes.
* EFAULT: (libc)Error Codes.
* EFBIG: (libc)Error Codes.
* EFTYPE: (libc)Error Codes.
* EGRATUITOUS: (libc)Error Codes.
* EGREGIOUS: (libc)Error Codes.
* EHOSTDOWN: (libc)Error Codes.
* EHOSTUNREACH: (libc)Error Codes.
* EHWPOISON: (libc)Error Codes.
* EIDRM: (libc)Error Codes.
* EIEIO: (libc)Error Codes.
* EILSEQ: (libc)Error Codes.
* EINPROGRESS: (libc)Error Codes.
* EINTR: (libc)Error Codes.
* EINVAL: (libc)Error Codes.
* EIO: (libc)Error Codes.
* EISCONN: (libc)Error Codes.
* EISDIR: (libc)Error Codes.
* EISNAM: (libc)Error Codes.
* EKEYEXPIRED: (libc)Error Codes.
* EKEYREJECTED: (libc)Error Codes.
* EKEYREVOKED: (libc)Error Codes.
* EL2HLT: (libc)Error Codes.
* EL2NSYNC: (libc)Error Codes.
* EL3HLT: (libc)Error Codes.
* EL3RST: (libc)Error Codes.
* ELIBACC: (libc)Error Codes.
* ELIBBAD: (libc)Error Codes.
* ELIBEXEC: (libc)Error Codes.
* ELIBMAX: (libc)Error Codes.
* ELIBSCN: (libc)Error Codes.
* ELNRNG: (libc)Error Codes.
* ELOOP: (libc)Error Codes.
* EMEDIUMTYPE: (libc)Error Codes.
* EMFILE: (libc)Error Codes.
* EMLINK: (libc)Error Codes.
* EMSGSIZE: (libc)Error Codes.
* EMULTIHOP: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENAMETOOLONG: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENAVAIL: (libc)Error Codes.
* encrypt: (libc)DES Encryption.
* encrypt_r: (libc)DES Encryption.
* endfsent: (libc)fstab.
* endgrent: (libc)Scanning All Groups.
* endhostent: (libc)Host Names.
* endmntent: (libc)mtab.
* endnetent: (libc)Networks Database.
* endnetgrent: (libc)Lookup Netgroup.
* endprotoent: (libc)Protocols Database.
* endpwent: (libc)Scanning All Users.
* endservent: (libc)Services Database.
* endutent: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* endutxent: (libc)XPG Functions.
* ENEEDAUTH: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENETDOWN: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENETRESET: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENETUNREACH: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENFILE: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOANO: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOBUFS: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOCSI: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENODATA: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENODEV: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOENT: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOEXEC: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOKEY: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOLCK: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOLINK: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOMEDIUM: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOMEM: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOMSG: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENONET: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOPKG: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOPROTOOPT: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOSPC: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOSR: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOSTR: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOSYS: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOTBLK: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOTCONN: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOTDIR: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOTEMPTY: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOTNAM: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOTRECOVERABLE: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOTSOCK: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOTSUP: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOTTY: (libc)Error Codes.
* ENOTUNIQ: (libc)Error Codes.
* envz_add: (libc)Envz Functions.
* envz_entry: (libc)Envz Functions.
* envz_get: (libc)Envz Functions.
* envz_merge: (libc)Envz Functions.
* envz_remove: (libc)Envz Functions.
* envz_strip: (libc)Envz Functions.
* ENXIO: (libc)Error Codes.
* EOF: (libc)EOF and Errors.
* EOPNOTSUPP: (libc)Error Codes.
* EOVERFLOW: (libc)Error Codes.
* EOWNERDEAD: (libc)Error Codes.
* EPERM: (libc)Error Codes.
* EPFNOSUPPORT: (libc)Error Codes.
* EPIPE: (libc)Error Codes.
* EPROCLIM: (libc)Error Codes.
* EPROCUNAVAIL: (libc)Error Codes.
* EPROGMISMATCH: (libc)Error Codes.
* EPROGUNAVAIL: (libc)Error Codes.
* EPROTO: (libc)Error Codes.
* EPROTONOSUPPORT: (libc)Error Codes.
* EPROTOTYPE: (libc)Error Codes.
* EQUIV_CLASS_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits.
* erand48: (libc)SVID Random.
* erand48_r: (libc)SVID Random.
* ERANGE: (libc)Error Codes.
* EREMCHG: (libc)Error Codes.
* EREMOTEIO: (libc)Error Codes.
* EREMOTE: (libc)Error Codes.
* ERESTART: (libc)Error Codes.
* erfcf: (libc)Special Functions.
* erfc: (libc)Special Functions.
* erfcl: (libc)Special Functions.
* erff: (libc)Special Functions.
* ERFKILL: (libc)Error Codes.
* erf: (libc)Special Functions.
* erfl: (libc)Special Functions.
* EROFS: (libc)Error Codes.
* ERPCMISMATCH: (libc)Error Codes.
* err: (libc)Error Messages.
* errno: (libc)Checking for Errors.
* error_at_line: (libc)Error Messages.
* error: (libc)Error Messages.
* errx: (libc)Error Messages.
* ESHUTDOWN: (libc)Error Codes.
* ESOCKTNOSUPPORT: (libc)Error Codes.
* ESPIPE: (libc)Error Codes.
* ESRCH: (libc)Error Codes.
* ESRMNT: (libc)Error Codes.
* ESTALE: (libc)Error Codes.
* ESTRPIPE: (libc)Error Codes.
* ETIMEDOUT: (libc)Error Codes.
* ETIME: (libc)Error Codes.
* ETOOMANYREFS: (libc)Error Codes.
* ETXTBSY: (libc)Error Codes.
* EUCLEAN: (libc)Error Codes.
* EUNATCH: (libc)Error Codes.
* EUSERS: (libc)Error Codes.
* EWOULDBLOCK: (libc)Error Codes.
* EXDEV: (libc)Error Codes.
* execle: (libc)Executing a File.
* execl: (libc)Executing a File.
* execlp: (libc)Executing a File.
* execve: (libc)Executing a File.
* execv: (libc)Executing a File.
* execvp: (libc)Executing a File.
* EXFULL: (libc)Error Codes.
* EXIT_FAILURE: (libc)Exit Status.
* exit: (libc)Normal Termination.
* _exit: (libc)Termination Internals.
* _Exit: (libc)Termination Internals.
* EXIT_SUCCESS: (libc)Exit Status.
* exp10f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* exp10: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* exp10l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* exp2f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* exp2: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* exp2l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* expf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* exp: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* explicit_bzero: (libc)Erasing Sensitive Data.
* expl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* expm1f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* expm1: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* expm1l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* EXPR_NEST_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits.
* fabsf: (libc)Absolute Value.
* fabs: (libc)Absolute Value.
* fabsl: (libc)Absolute Value.
* __fbufsize: (libc)Controlling Buffering.
* fchdir: (libc)Working Directory.
* fchmod: (libc)Setting Permissions.
* fchown: (libc)File Owner.
* fcloseall: (libc)Closing Streams.
* fclose: (libc)Closing Streams.
* fcntl: (libc)Control Operations.
* fcvt: (libc)System V Number Conversion.
* fcvt_r: (libc)System V Number Conversion.
* fdatasync: (libc)Synchronizing I/O.
* FD_CLOEXEC: (libc)Descriptor Flags.
* FD_CLR: (libc)Waiting for I/O.
* fdimf: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fdim: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fdiml: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* FD_ISSET: (libc)Waiting for I/O.
* fdopendir: (libc)Opening a Directory.
* fdopen: (libc)Descriptors and Streams.
* FD_SET: (libc)Waiting for I/O.
* FD_SETSIZE: (libc)Waiting for I/O.
* F_DUPFD: (libc)Duplicating Descriptors.
* FD_ZERO: (libc)Waiting for I/O.
* feclearexcept: (libc)Status bit operations.
* fedisableexcept: (libc)Control Functions.
* feenableexcept: (libc)Control Functions.
* fegetenv: (libc)Control Functions.
* fegetexceptflag: (libc)Status bit operations.
* fegetexcept: (libc)Control Functions.
* fegetmode: (libc)Control Functions.
* fegetround: (libc)Rounding.
* feholdexcept: (libc)Control Functions.
* feof: (libc)EOF and Errors.
* feof_unlocked: (libc)EOF and Errors.
* feraiseexcept: (libc)Status bit operations.
* ferror: (libc)EOF and Errors.
* ferror_unlocked: (libc)EOF and Errors.
* fesetenv: (libc)Control Functions.
* fesetexceptflag: (libc)Status bit operations.
* fesetexcept: (libc)Status bit operations.
* fesetmode: (libc)Control Functions.
* fesetround: (libc)Rounding.
* FE_SNANS_ALWAYS_SIGNAL: (libc)Infinity and NaN.
* fetestexceptflag: (libc)Status bit operations.
* fetestexcept: (libc)Status bit operations.
* feupdateenv: (libc)Control Functions.
* fflush: (libc)Flushing Buffers.
* fflush_unlocked: (libc)Flushing Buffers.
* fgetc: (libc)Character Input.
* fgetc_unlocked: (libc)Character Input.
* F_GETFD: (libc)Descriptor Flags.
* F_GETFL: (libc)Getting File Status Flags.
* fgetgrent: (libc)Scanning All Groups.
* fgetgrent_r: (libc)Scanning All Groups.
* F_GETLK: (libc)File Locks.
* F_GETOWN: (libc)Interrupt Input.
* fgetpos64: (libc)Portable Positioning.
* fgetpos: (libc)Portable Positioning.
* fgetpwent: (libc)Scanning All Users.
* fgetpwent_r: (libc)Scanning All Users.
* fgets: (libc)Line Input.
* fgets_unlocked: (libc)Line Input.
* fgetwc: (libc)Character Input.
* fgetwc_unlocked: (libc)Character Input.
* fgetws: (libc)Line Input.
* fgetws_unlocked: (libc)Line Input.
* FILENAME_MAX: (libc)Limits for Files.
* fileno: (libc)Descriptors and Streams.
* fileno_unlocked: (libc)Descriptors and Streams.
* finitef: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* finite: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* finitel: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* __flbf: (libc)Controlling Buffering.
* flockfile: (libc)Streams and Threads.
* floorf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* floor: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* floorl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* _flushlbf: (libc)Flushing Buffers.
* FLUSHO: (libc)Local Modes.
* fmaf: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fma: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fmal: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fmaxf: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fmax: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fmaxl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fmaxmagf: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fmaxmag: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fmaxmagl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fmemopen: (libc)String Streams.
* fminf: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fmin: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fminl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fminmagf: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fminmag: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fminmagl: (libc)Misc FP Arithmetic.
* fmodf: (libc)Remainder Functions.
* fmod: (libc)Remainder Functions.
* fmodl: (libc)Remainder Functions.
* fmtmsg: (libc)Printing Formatted Messages.
* fnmatch: (libc)Wildcard Matching.
* F_OFD_GETLK: (libc)Open File Description Locks.
* F_OFD_SETLK: (libc)Open File Description Locks.
* F_OFD_SETLKW: (libc)Open File Description Locks.
* F_OK: (libc)Testing File Access.
* fopen64: (libc)Opening Streams.
* fopencookie: (libc)Streams and Cookies.
* fopen: (libc)Opening Streams.
* FOPEN_MAX: (libc)Opening Streams.
* fork: (libc)Creating a Process.
* forkpty: (libc)Pseudo-Terminal Pairs.
* fpathconf: (libc)Pathconf.
* fpclassify: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* __fpending: (libc)Controlling Buffering.
* FP_ILOGB0: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* FP_ILOGBNAN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* FP_LLOGB0: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* FP_LLOGBNAN: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* fprintf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions.
* __fpurge: (libc)Flushing Buffers.
* fputc: (libc)Simple Output.
* fputc_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output.
* fputs: (libc)Simple Output.
* fputs_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output.
* fputwc: (libc)Simple Output.
* fputwc_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output.
* fputws: (libc)Simple Output.
* fputws_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output.
* __freadable: (libc)Opening Streams.
* __freading: (libc)Opening Streams.
* fread: (libc)Block Input/Output.
* fread_unlocked: (libc)Block Input/Output.
* free: (libc)Freeing after Malloc.
* freopen64: (libc)Opening Streams.
* freopen: (libc)Opening Streams.
* frexpf: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* frexp: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* frexpl: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* fromfpf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* fromfp: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* fromfpl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* fromfpxf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* fromfpx: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* fromfpxl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* fscanf: (libc)Formatted Input Functions.
* fseek: (libc)File Positioning.
* fseeko64: (libc)File Positioning.
* fseeko: (libc)File Positioning.
* F_SETFD: (libc)Descriptor Flags.
* F_SETFL: (libc)Getting File Status Flags.
* F_SETLK: (libc)File Locks.
* F_SETLKW: (libc)File Locks.
* __fsetlocking: (libc)Streams and Threads.
* F_SETOWN: (libc)Interrupt Input.
* fsetpos64: (libc)Portable Positioning.
* fsetpos: (libc)Portable Positioning.
* fstat64: (libc)Reading Attributes.
* fstat: (libc)Reading Attributes.
* fsync: (libc)Synchronizing I/O.
* ftell: (libc)File Positioning.
* ftello64: (libc)File Positioning.
* ftello: (libc)File Positioning.
* ftruncate64: (libc)File Size.
* ftruncate: (libc)File Size.
* ftrylockfile: (libc)Streams and Threads.
* ftw64: (libc)Working with Directory Trees.
* ftw: (libc)Working with Directory Trees.
* funlockfile: (libc)Streams and Threads.
* futimes: (libc)File Times.
* fwide: (libc)Streams and I18N.
* fwprintf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions.
* __fwritable: (libc)Opening Streams.
* fwrite: (libc)Block Input/Output.
* fwrite_unlocked: (libc)Block Input/Output.
* __fwriting: (libc)Opening Streams.
* fwscanf: (libc)Formatted Input Functions.
* gammaf: (libc)Special Functions.
* gamma: (libc)Special Functions.
* gammal: (libc)Special Functions.
* __gconv_end_fct: (libc)glibc iconv Implementation.
* __gconv_fct: (libc)glibc iconv Implementation.
* __gconv_init_fct: (libc)glibc iconv Implementation.
* gcvt: (libc)System V Number Conversion.
* getauxval: (libc)Auxiliary Vector.
* get_avphys_pages: (libc)Query Memory Parameters.
* getchar: (libc)Character Input.
* getchar_unlocked: (libc)Character Input.
* getc: (libc)Character Input.
* getcontext: (libc)System V contexts.
* getc_unlocked: (libc)Character Input.
* get_current_dir_name: (libc)Working Directory.
* getcwd: (libc)Working Directory.
* getdate: (libc)General Time String Parsing.
* getdate_r: (libc)General Time String Parsing.
* getdelim: (libc)Line Input.
* getdomainnname: (libc)Host Identification.
* getegid: (libc)Reading Persona.
* getentropy: (libc)Unpredictable Bytes.
* getenv: (libc)Environment Access.
* geteuid: (libc)Reading Persona.
* getfsent: (libc)fstab.
* getfsfile: (libc)fstab.
* getfsspec: (libc)fstab.
* getgid: (libc)Reading Persona.
* getgrent: (libc)Scanning All Groups.
* getgrent_r: (libc)Scanning All Groups.
* getgrgid: (libc)Lookup Group.
* getgrgid_r: (libc)Lookup Group.
* getgrnam: (libc)Lookup Group.
* getgrnam_r: (libc)Lookup Group.
* getgrouplist: (libc)Setting Groups.
* getgroups: (libc)Reading Persona.
* gethostbyaddr: (libc)Host Names.
* gethostbyaddr_r: (libc)Host Names.
* gethostbyname2: (libc)Host Names.
* gethostbyname2_r: (libc)Host Names.
* gethostbyname: (libc)Host Names.
* gethostbyname_r: (libc)Host Names.
* gethostent: (libc)Host Names.
* gethostid: (libc)Host Identification.
* gethostname: (libc)Host Identification.
* getitimer: (libc)Setting an Alarm.
* getline: (libc)Line Input.
* getloadavg: (libc)Processor Resources.
* getlogin: (libc)Who Logged In.
* getmntent: (libc)mtab.
* getmntent_r: (libc)mtab.
* getnetbyaddr: (libc)Networks Database.
* getnetbyname: (libc)Networks Database.
* getnetent: (libc)Networks Database.
* getnetgrent: (libc)Lookup Netgroup.
* getnetgrent_r: (libc)Lookup Netgroup.
* get_nprocs_conf: (libc)Processor Resources.
* get_nprocs: (libc)Processor Resources.
* getopt: (libc)Using Getopt.
* getopt_long: (libc)Getopt Long Options.
* getopt_long_only: (libc)Getopt Long Options.
* getpagesize: (libc)Query Memory Parameters.
* getpass: (libc)getpass.
* getpayloadf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* getpayload: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* getpayloadl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* getpeername: (libc)Who is Connected.
* getpgid: (libc)Process Group Functions.
* getpgrp: (libc)Process Group Functions.
* get_phys_pages: (libc)Query Memory Parameters.
* getpid: (libc)Process Identification.
* getppid: (libc)Process Identification.
* getpriority: (libc)Traditional Scheduling Functions.
* getprotobyname: (libc)Protocols Database.
* getprotobynumber: (libc)Protocols Database.
* getprotoent: (libc)Protocols Database.
* getpt: (libc)Allocation.
* getpwent: (libc)Scanning All Users.
* getpwent_r: (libc)Scanning All Users.
* getpwnam: (libc)Lookup User.
* getpwnam_r: (libc)Lookup User.
* getpwuid: (libc)Lookup User.
* getpwuid_r: (libc)Lookup User.
* getrandom: (libc)Unpredictable Bytes.
* getrlimit64: (libc)Limits on Resources.
* getrlimit: (libc)Limits on Resources.
* getrusage: (libc)Resource Usage.
* getservbyname: (libc)Services Database.
* getservbyport: (libc)Services Database.
* getservent: (libc)Services Database.
* getsid: (libc)Process Group Functions.
* gets: (libc)Line Input.
* getsockname: (libc)Reading Address.
* getsockopt: (libc)Socket Option Functions.
* getsubopt: (libc)Suboptions.
* gettext: (libc)Translation with gettext.
* gettimeofday: (libc)High-Resolution Calendar.
* getuid: (libc)Reading Persona.
* getumask: (libc)Setting Permissions.
* getutent: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* getutent_r: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* getutid: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* getutid_r: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* getutline: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* getutline_r: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* getutmp: (libc)XPG Functions.
* getutmpx: (libc)XPG Functions.
* getutxent: (libc)XPG Functions.
* getutxid: (libc)XPG Functions.
* getutxline: (libc)XPG Functions.
* getwchar: (libc)Character Input.
* getwchar_unlocked: (libc)Character Input.
* getwc: (libc)Character Input.
* getwc_unlocked: (libc)Character Input.
* getwd: (libc)Working Directory.
* getw: (libc)Character Input.
* glob64: (libc)Calling Glob.
* globfree64: (libc)More Flags for Globbing.
* globfree: (libc)More Flags for Globbing.
* glob: (libc)Calling Glob.
* gmtime: (libc)Broken-down Time.
* gmtime_r: (libc)Broken-down Time.
* grantpt: (libc)Allocation.
* gsignal: (libc)Signaling Yourself.
* gtty: (libc)BSD Terminal Modes.
* hasmntopt: (libc)mtab.
* hcreate: (libc)Hash Search Function.
* hcreate_r: (libc)Hash Search Function.
* hdestroy: (libc)Hash Search Function.
* hdestroy_r: (libc)Hash Search Function.
* hsearch: (libc)Hash Search Function.
* hsearch_r: (libc)Hash Search Function.
* htonl: (libc)Byte Order.
* htons: (libc)Byte Order.
* HUGE_VALF: (libc)Math Error Reporting.
* HUGE_VAL: (libc)Math Error Reporting.
* HUGE_VALL: (libc)Math Error Reporting.
* HUPCL: (libc)Control Modes.
* hypotf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* hypot: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* hypotl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* ICANON: (libc)Local Modes.
* iconv_close: (libc)Generic Conversion Interface.
* iconv: (libc)Generic Conversion Interface.
* iconv_open: (libc)Generic Conversion Interface.
* ICRNL: (libc)Input Modes.
* IEXTEN: (libc)Local Modes.
* if_freenameindex: (libc)Interface Naming.
* if_indextoname: (libc)Interface Naming.
* if_nameindex: (libc)Interface Naming.
* if_nametoindex: (libc)Interface Naming.
* IFNAMSIZ: (libc)Interface Naming.
* IFTODT: (libc)Directory Entries.
* IGNBRK: (libc)Input Modes.
* IGNCR: (libc)Input Modes.
* IGNPAR: (libc)Input Modes.
* I: (libc)Complex Numbers.
* ilogbf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* ilogb: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* ilogbl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* _Imaginary_I: (libc)Complex Numbers.
* imaxabs: (libc)Absolute Value.
* IMAXBEL: (libc)Input Modes.
* imaxdiv: (libc)Integer Division.
* in6addr_any: (libc)Host Address Data Type.
* in6addr_loopback: (libc)Host Address Data Type.
* INADDR_ANY: (libc)Host Address Data Type.
* INADDR_BROADCAST: (libc)Host Address Data Type.
* INADDR_LOOPBACK: (libc)Host Address Data Type.
* INADDR_NONE: (libc)Host Address Data Type.
* index: (libc)Search Functions.
* inet_addr: (libc)Host Address Functions.
* inet_aton: (libc)Host Address Functions.
* inet_lnaof: (libc)Host Address Functions.
* inet_makeaddr: (libc)Host Address Functions.
* inet_netof: (libc)Host Address Functions.
* inet_network: (libc)Host Address Functions.
* inet_ntoa: (libc)Host Address Functions.
* inet_ntop: (libc)Host Address Functions.
* inet_pton: (libc)Host Address Functions.
* INFINITY: (libc)Infinity and NaN.
* initgroups: (libc)Setting Groups.
* initstate: (libc)BSD Random.
* initstate_r: (libc)BSD Random.
* INLCR: (libc)Input Modes.
* innetgr: (libc)Netgroup Membership.
* INPCK: (libc)Input Modes.
* ioctl: (libc)IOCTLs.
* _IOFBF: (libc)Controlling Buffering.
* _IOLBF: (libc)Controlling Buffering.
* _IONBF: (libc)Controlling Buffering.
* IPPORT_RESERVED: (libc)Ports.
* IPPORT_USERRESERVED: (libc)Ports.
* isalnum: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* isalpha: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* isascii: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* isatty: (libc)Is It a Terminal.
* isblank: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* iscanonical: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* iscntrl: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* isdigit: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* iseqsig: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* isfinite: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* isgraph: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* isgreaterequal: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* isgreater: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* ISIG: (libc)Local Modes.
* isinff: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* isinf: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* isinfl: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* islessequal: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* islessgreater: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* isless: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* islower: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* isnanf: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* isnan: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* isnan: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* isnanl: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* isnormal: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* isprint: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* ispunct: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* issignaling: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* isspace: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* issubnormal: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* ISTRIP: (libc)Input Modes.
* isunordered: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* isupper: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* iswalnum: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* iswalpha: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* iswblank: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* iswcntrl: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* iswctype: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* iswdigit: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* iswgraph: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* iswlower: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* iswprint: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* iswpunct: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* iswspace: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* iswupper: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* iswxdigit: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* isxdigit: (libc)Classification of Characters.
* iszero: (libc)Floating Point Classes.
* IXANY: (libc)Input Modes.
* IXOFF: (libc)Input Modes.
* IXON: (libc)Input Modes.
* j0f: (libc)Special Functions.
* j0: (libc)Special Functions.
* j0l: (libc)Special Functions.
* j1f: (libc)Special Functions.
* j1: (libc)Special Functions.
* j1l: (libc)Special Functions.
* jnf: (libc)Special Functions.
* jn: (libc)Special Functions.
* jnl: (libc)Special Functions.
* jrand48: (libc)SVID Random.
* jrand48_r: (libc)SVID Random.
* kill: (libc)Signaling Another Process.
* killpg: (libc)Signaling Another Process.
* l64a: (libc)Encode Binary Data.
* labs: (libc)Absolute Value.
* lcong48: (libc)SVID Random.
* lcong48_r: (libc)SVID Random.
* L_ctermid: (libc)Identifying the Terminal.
* L_cuserid: (libc)Who Logged In.
* ldexpf: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* ldexp: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* ldexpl: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* ldiv: (libc)Integer Division.
* lfind: (libc)Array Search Function.
* lgammaf: (libc)Special Functions.
* lgammaf_r: (libc)Special Functions.
* lgamma: (libc)Special Functions.
* lgammal: (libc)Special Functions.
* lgammal_r: (libc)Special Functions.
* lgamma_r: (libc)Special Functions.
* LINE_MAX: (libc)Utility Limits.
* link: (libc)Hard Links.
* LINK_MAX: (libc)Limits for Files.
* lio_listio64: (libc)Asynchronous Reads/Writes.
* lio_listio: (libc)Asynchronous Reads/Writes.
* listen: (libc)Listening.
* llabs: (libc)Absolute Value.
* lldiv: (libc)Integer Division.
* llogbf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* llogb: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* llogbl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* llrintf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* llrint: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* llrintl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* llroundf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* llround: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* llroundl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* localeconv: (libc)The Lame Way to Locale Data.
* localtime: (libc)Broken-down Time.
* localtime_r: (libc)Broken-down Time.
* log10f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* log10: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* log10l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* log1pf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* log1p: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* log1pl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* log2f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* log2: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* log2l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* logbf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* logb: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* logbl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* logf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* login: (libc)Logging In and Out.
* login_tty: (libc)Logging In and Out.
* log: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* logl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* logout: (libc)Logging In and Out.
* logwtmp: (libc)Logging In and Out.
* longjmp: (libc)Non-Local Details.
* lrand48: (libc)SVID Random.
* lrand48_r: (libc)SVID Random.
* lrintf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* lrint: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* lrintl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* lroundf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* lround: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* lroundl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* lsearch: (libc)Array Search Function.
* lseek64: (libc)File Position Primitive.
* lseek: (libc)File Position Primitive.
* lstat64: (libc)Reading Attributes.
* lstat: (libc)Reading Attributes.
* L_tmpnam: (libc)Temporary Files.
* lutimes: (libc)File Times.
* madvise: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O.
* makecontext: (libc)System V contexts.
* mallinfo: (libc)Statistics of Malloc.
* malloc: (libc)Basic Allocation.
* mallopt: (libc)Malloc Tunable Parameters.
* MAX_CANON: (libc)Limits for Files.
* MAX_INPUT: (libc)Limits for Files.
* MAXNAMLEN: (libc)Limits for Files.
* MAXSYMLINKS: (libc)Symbolic Links.
* MB_CUR_MAX: (libc)Selecting the Conversion.
* mblen: (libc)Non-reentrant Character Conversion.
* MB_LEN_MAX: (libc)Selecting the Conversion.
* mbrlen: (libc)Converting a Character.
* mbrtowc: (libc)Converting a Character.
* mbsinit: (libc)Keeping the state.
* mbsnrtowcs: (libc)Converting Strings.
* mbsrtowcs: (libc)Converting Strings.
* mbstowcs: (libc)Non-reentrant String Conversion.
* mbtowc: (libc)Non-reentrant Character Conversion.
* mcheck: (libc)Heap Consistency Checking.
* MDMBUF: (libc)Control Modes.
* memalign: (libc)Aligned Memory Blocks.
* memccpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* memchr: (libc)Search Functions.
* memcmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison.
* memcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* memfrob: (libc)Trivial Encryption.
* memmem: (libc)Search Functions.
* memmove: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* mempcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* memrchr: (libc)Search Functions.
* memset: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* mkdir: (libc)Creating Directories.
* mkdtemp: (libc)Temporary Files.
* mkfifo: (libc)FIFO Special Files.
* mknod: (libc)Making Special Files.
* mkstemp: (libc)Temporary Files.
* mktemp: (libc)Temporary Files.
* mktime: (libc)Broken-down Time.
* mlockall: (libc)Page Lock Functions.
* mlock: (libc)Page Lock Functions.
* mmap64: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O.
* mmap: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O.
* modff: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* modf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* modfl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* mount: (libc)Mount-Unmount-Remount.
* mprobe: (libc)Heap Consistency Checking.
* mrand48: (libc)SVID Random.
* mrand48_r: (libc)SVID Random.
* mremap: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O.
* MSG_DONTROUTE: (libc)Socket Data Options.
* MSG_OOB: (libc)Socket Data Options.
* MSG_PEEK: (libc)Socket Data Options.
* msync: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O.
* mtrace: (libc)Tracing malloc.
* munlockall: (libc)Page Lock Functions.
* munlock: (libc)Page Lock Functions.
* munmap: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O.
* muntrace: (libc)Tracing malloc.
* NAME_MAX: (libc)Limits for Files.
* nanf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nan: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* NAN: (libc)Infinity and NaN.
* nanl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nanosleep: (libc)Sleeping.
* NCCS: (libc)Mode Data Types.
* nearbyintf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* nearbyint: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* nearbyintl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* nextafterf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nextafter: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nextafterl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nextdownf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nextdown: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nextdownl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nexttowardf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nexttoward: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nexttowardl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nextupf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nextup: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nextupl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* nftw64: (libc)Working with Directory Trees.
* nftw: (libc)Working with Directory Trees.
* ngettext: (libc)Advanced gettext functions.
* NGROUPS_MAX: (libc)General Limits.
* nice: (libc)Traditional Scheduling Functions.
* nl_langinfo: (libc)The Elegant and Fast Way.
* NOFLSH: (libc)Local Modes.
* NOKERNINFO: (libc)Local Modes.
* nrand48: (libc)SVID Random.
* nrand48_r: (libc)SVID Random.
* NSIG: (libc)Standard Signals.
* ntohl: (libc)Byte Order.
* ntohs: (libc)Byte Order.
* ntp_adjtime: (libc)High Accuracy Clock.
* ntp_gettime: (libc)High Accuracy Clock.
* NULL: (libc)Null Pointer Constant.
* O_ACCMODE: (libc)Access Modes.
* O_APPEND: (libc)Operating Modes.
* O_ASYNC: (libc)Operating Modes.
* obstack_1grow_fast: (libc)Extra Fast Growing.
* obstack_1grow: (libc)Growing Objects.
* obstack_alignment_mask: (libc)Obstacks Data Alignment.
* obstack_alloc: (libc)Allocation in an Obstack.
* obstack_base: (libc)Status of an Obstack.
* obstack_blank_fast: (libc)Extra Fast Growing.
* obstack_blank: (libc)Growing Objects.
* obstack_chunk_size: (libc)Obstack Chunks.
* obstack_copy0: (libc)Allocation in an Obstack.
* obstack_copy: (libc)Allocation in an Obstack.
* obstack_finish: (libc)Growing Objects.
* obstack_free: (libc)Freeing Obstack Objects.
* obstack_grow0: (libc)Growing Objects.
* obstack_grow: (libc)Growing Objects.
* obstack_init: (libc)Preparing for Obstacks.
* obstack_int_grow_fast: (libc)Extra Fast Growing.
* obstack_int_grow: (libc)Growing Objects.
* obstack_next_free: (libc)Status of an Obstack.
* obstack_object_size: (libc)Growing Objects.
* obstack_object_size: (libc)Status of an Obstack.
* obstack_printf: (libc)Dynamic Output.
* obstack_ptr_grow_fast: (libc)Extra Fast Growing.
* obstack_ptr_grow: (libc)Growing Objects.
* obstack_room: (libc)Extra Fast Growing.
* obstack_vprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output.
* O_CREAT: (libc)Open-time Flags.
* O_EXCL: (libc)Open-time Flags.
* O_EXEC: (libc)Access Modes.
* O_EXLOCK: (libc)Open-time Flags.
* offsetof: (libc)Structure Measurement.
* O_FSYNC: (libc)Operating Modes.
* O_IGNORE_CTTY: (libc)Open-time Flags.
* O_NDELAY: (libc)Operating Modes.
* on_exit: (libc)Cleanups on Exit.
* ONLCR: (libc)Output Modes.
* O_NOATIME: (libc)Operating Modes.
* O_NOCTTY: (libc)Open-time Flags.
* ONOEOT: (libc)Output Modes.
* O_NOLINK: (libc)Open-time Flags.
* O_NONBLOCK: (libc)Open-time Flags.
* O_NONBLOCK: (libc)Operating Modes.
* O_NOTRANS: (libc)Open-time Flags.
* open64: (libc)Opening and Closing Files.
* opendir: (libc)Opening a Directory.
* open: (libc)Opening and Closing Files.
* openlog: (libc)openlog.
* OPEN_MAX: (libc)General Limits.
* open_memstream: (libc)String Streams.
* openpty: (libc)Pseudo-Terminal Pairs.
* OPOST: (libc)Output Modes.
* O_RDONLY: (libc)Access Modes.
* O_RDWR: (libc)Access Modes.
* O_READ: (libc)Access Modes.
* O_SHLOCK: (libc)Open-time Flags.
* O_SYNC: (libc)Operating Modes.
* O_TRUNC: (libc)Open-time Flags.
* O_WRITE: (libc)Access Modes.
* O_WRONLY: (libc)Access Modes.
* OXTABS: (libc)Output Modes.
* PA_FLAG_MASK: (libc)Parsing a Template String.
* PARENB: (libc)Control Modes.
* PARMRK: (libc)Input Modes.
* PARODD: (libc)Control Modes.
* parse_printf_format: (libc)Parsing a Template String.
* pathconf: (libc)Pathconf.
* PATH_MAX: (libc)Limits for Files.
* _PATH_UTMP: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* _PATH_WTMP: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* pause: (libc)Using Pause.
* pclose: (libc)Pipe to a Subprocess.
* PENDIN: (libc)Local Modes.
* perror: (libc)Error Messages.
* PF_FILE: (libc)Local Namespace Details.
* PF_INET6: (libc)Internet Namespace.
* PF_INET: (libc)Internet Namespace.
* PF_LOCAL: (libc)Local Namespace Details.
* PF_UNIX: (libc)Local Namespace Details.
* PIPE_BUF: (libc)Limits for Files.
* pipe: (libc)Creating a Pipe.
* popen: (libc)Pipe to a Subprocess.
* _POSIX2_C_DEV: (libc)System Options.
* _POSIX2_C_VERSION: (libc)Version Supported.
* _POSIX2_FORT_DEV: (libc)System Options.
* _POSIX2_FORT_RUN: (libc)System Options.
* _POSIX2_LOCALEDEF: (libc)System Options.
* _POSIX2_SW_DEV: (libc)System Options.
* _POSIX_CHOWN_RESTRICTED: (libc)Options for Files.
* posix_fallocate64: (libc)Storage Allocation.
* posix_fallocate: (libc)Storage Allocation.
* _POSIX_JOB_CONTROL: (libc)System Options.
* posix_memalign: (libc)Aligned Memory Blocks.
* _POSIX_NO_TRUNC: (libc)Options for Files.
* _POSIX_SAVED_IDS: (libc)System Options.
* _POSIX_VDISABLE: (libc)Options for Files.
* _POSIX_VERSION: (libc)Version Supported.
* pow10f: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* pow10: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* pow10l: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* powf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* pow: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* powl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* __ppc_get_timebase_freq: (libc)PowerPC.
* __ppc_get_timebase: (libc)PowerPC.
* __ppc_mdoio: (libc)PowerPC.
* __ppc_mdoom: (libc)PowerPC.
* __ppc_set_ppr_low: (libc)PowerPC.
* __ppc_set_ppr_med_high: (libc)PowerPC.
* __ppc_set_ppr_med: (libc)PowerPC.
* __ppc_set_ppr_med_low: (libc)PowerPC.
* __ppc_set_ppr_very_low: (libc)PowerPC.
* __ppc_yield: (libc)PowerPC.
* pread64: (libc)I/O Primitives.
* pread: (libc)I/O Primitives.
* printf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions.
* printf_size_info: (libc)Predefined Printf Handlers.
* printf_size: (libc)Predefined Printf Handlers.
* psignal: (libc)Signal Messages.
* pthread_getattr_default_np: (libc)Default Thread Attributes.
* pthread_getspecific: (libc)Thread-specific Data.
* pthread_key_create: (libc)Thread-specific Data.
* pthread_key_delete: (libc)Thread-specific Data.
* pthread_setattr_default_np: (libc)Default Thread Attributes.
* pthread_setspecific: (libc)Thread-specific Data.
* P_tmpdir: (libc)Temporary Files.
* ptsname: (libc)Allocation.
* ptsname_r: (libc)Allocation.
* putchar: (libc)Simple Output.
* putchar_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output.
* putc: (libc)Simple Output.
* putc_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output.
* putenv: (libc)Environment Access.
* putpwent: (libc)Writing a User Entry.
* puts: (libc)Simple Output.
* pututline: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* pututxline: (libc)XPG Functions.
* putwchar: (libc)Simple Output.
* putwchar_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output.
* putwc: (libc)Simple Output.
* putwc_unlocked: (libc)Simple Output.
* putw: (libc)Simple Output.
* pwrite64: (libc)I/O Primitives.
* pwrite: (libc)I/O Primitives.
* qecvt: (libc)System V Number Conversion.
* qecvt_r: (libc)System V Number Conversion.
* qfcvt: (libc)System V Number Conversion.
* qfcvt_r: (libc)System V Number Conversion.
* qgcvt: (libc)System V Number Conversion.
* qsort: (libc)Array Sort Function.
* raise: (libc)Signaling Yourself.
* rand: (libc)ISO Random.
* RAND_MAX: (libc)ISO Random.
* random: (libc)BSD Random.
* random_r: (libc)BSD Random.
* rand_r: (libc)ISO Random.
* rawmemchr: (libc)Search Functions.
* readdir64: (libc)Reading/Closing Directory.
* readdir64_r: (libc)Reading/Closing Directory.
* readdir: (libc)Reading/Closing Directory.
* readdir_r: (libc)Reading/Closing Directory.
* read: (libc)I/O Primitives.
* readlink: (libc)Symbolic Links.
* readv: (libc)Scatter-Gather.
* realloc: (libc)Changing Block Size.
* realpath: (libc)Symbolic Links.
* recvfrom: (libc)Receiving Datagrams.
* recv: (libc)Receiving Data.
* recvmsg: (libc)Receiving Datagrams.
* RE_DUP_MAX: (libc)General Limits.
* regcomp: (libc)POSIX Regexp Compilation.
* regerror: (libc)Regexp Cleanup.
* regexec: (libc)Matching POSIX Regexps.
* regfree: (libc)Regexp Cleanup.
* register_printf_function: (libc)Registering New Conversions.
* remainderf: (libc)Remainder Functions.
* remainder: (libc)Remainder Functions.
* remainderl: (libc)Remainder Functions.
* remove: (libc)Deleting Files.
* rename: (libc)Renaming Files.
* rewinddir: (libc)Random Access Directory.
* rewind: (libc)File Positioning.
* rindex: (libc)Search Functions.
* rintf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* rint: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* rintl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* RLIM_INFINITY: (libc)Limits on Resources.
* rmdir: (libc)Deleting Files.
* R_OK: (libc)Testing File Access.
* roundevenf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* roundeven: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* roundevenl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* roundf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* round: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* roundl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* rpmatch: (libc)Yes-or-No Questions.
* SA_NOCLDSTOP: (libc)Flags for Sigaction.
* SA_ONSTACK: (libc)Flags for Sigaction.
* SA_RESTART: (libc)Flags for Sigaction.
* sbrk: (libc)Resizing the Data Segment.
* scalbf: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* scalb: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* scalbl: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* scalblnf: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* scalbln: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* scalblnl: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* scalbnf: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* scalbn: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* scalbnl: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* scandir64: (libc)Scanning Directory Content.
* scandir: (libc)Scanning Directory Content.
* scanf: (libc)Formatted Input Functions.
* sched_getaffinity: (libc)CPU Affinity.
* sched_getparam: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions.
* sched_get_priority_max: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions.
* sched_get_priority_min: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions.
* sched_getscheduler: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions.
* sched_rr_get_interval: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions.
* sched_setaffinity: (libc)CPU Affinity.
* sched_setparam: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions.
* sched_setscheduler: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions.
* sched_yield: (libc)Basic Scheduling Functions.
* secure_getenv: (libc)Environment Access.
* seed48: (libc)SVID Random.
* seed48_r: (libc)SVID Random.
* SEEK_CUR: (libc)File Positioning.
* seekdir: (libc)Random Access Directory.
* SEEK_END: (libc)File Positioning.
* SEEK_SET: (libc)File Positioning.
* select: (libc)Waiting for I/O.
* sem_close: (libc)Semaphores.
* semctl: (libc)Semaphores.
* sem_destroy: (libc)Semaphores.
* semget: (libc)Semaphores.
* sem_getvalue: (libc)Semaphores.
* sem_init: (libc)Semaphores.
* sem_open: (libc)Semaphores.
* semop: (libc)Semaphores.
* sem_post: (libc)Semaphores.
* semtimedop: (libc)Semaphores.
* sem_timedwait: (libc)Semaphores.
* sem_trywait: (libc)Semaphores.
* sem_unlink: (libc)Semaphores.
* sem_wait: (libc)Semaphores.
* send: (libc)Sending Data.
* sendmsg: (libc)Receiving Datagrams.
* sendto: (libc)Sending Datagrams.
* setbuffer: (libc)Controlling Buffering.
* setbuf: (libc)Controlling Buffering.
* setcontext: (libc)System V contexts.
* setdomainname: (libc)Host Identification.
* setegid: (libc)Setting Groups.
* setenv: (libc)Environment Access.
* seteuid: (libc)Setting User ID.
* setfsent: (libc)fstab.
* setgid: (libc)Setting Groups.
* setgrent: (libc)Scanning All Groups.
* setgroups: (libc)Setting Groups.
* sethostent: (libc)Host Names.
* sethostid: (libc)Host Identification.
* sethostname: (libc)Host Identification.
* setitimer: (libc)Setting an Alarm.
* setjmp: (libc)Non-Local Details.
* setkey: (libc)DES Encryption.
* setkey_r: (libc)DES Encryption.
* setlinebuf: (libc)Controlling Buffering.
* setlocale: (libc)Setting the Locale.
* setlogmask: (libc)setlogmask.
* setmntent: (libc)mtab.
* setnetent: (libc)Networks Database.
* setnetgrent: (libc)Lookup Netgroup.
* setpayloadf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* setpayload: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* setpayloadl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* setpayloadsigf: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* setpayloadsig: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* setpayloadsigl: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* setpgid: (libc)Process Group Functions.
* setpgrp: (libc)Process Group Functions.
* setpriority: (libc)Traditional Scheduling Functions.
* setprotoent: (libc)Protocols Database.
* setpwent: (libc)Scanning All Users.
* setregid: (libc)Setting Groups.
* setreuid: (libc)Setting User ID.
* setrlimit64: (libc)Limits on Resources.
* setrlimit: (libc)Limits on Resources.
* setservent: (libc)Services Database.
* setsid: (libc)Process Group Functions.
* setsockopt: (libc)Socket Option Functions.
* setstate: (libc)BSD Random.
* setstate_r: (libc)BSD Random.
* settimeofday: (libc)High-Resolution Calendar.
* setuid: (libc)Setting User ID.
* setutent: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* setutxent: (libc)XPG Functions.
* setvbuf: (libc)Controlling Buffering.
* shm_open: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O.
* shm_unlink: (libc)Memory-mapped I/O.
* shutdown: (libc)Closing a Socket.
* S_IFMT: (libc)Testing File Type.
* SIGABRT: (libc)Program Error Signals.
* sigaction: (libc)Advanced Signal Handling.
* sigaddset: (libc)Signal Sets.
* SIGALRM: (libc)Alarm Signals.
* sigaltstack: (libc)Signal Stack.
* sigblock: (libc)BSD Signal Handling.
* SIGBUS: (libc)Program Error Signals.
* SIGCHLD: (libc)Job Control Signals.
* SIGCLD: (libc)Job Control Signals.
* SIGCONT: (libc)Job Control Signals.
* sigdelset: (libc)Signal Sets.
* sigemptyset: (libc)Signal Sets.
* SIGEMT: (libc)Program Error Signals.
* SIG_ERR: (libc)Basic Signal Handling.
* sigfillset: (libc)Signal Sets.
* SIGFPE: (libc)Program Error Signals.
* SIGHUP: (libc)Termination Signals.
* SIGILL: (libc)Program Error Signals.
* SIGINFO: (libc)Miscellaneous Signals.
* siginterrupt: (libc)BSD Signal Handling.
* SIGINT: (libc)Termination Signals.
* SIGIO: (libc)Asynchronous I/O Signals.
* SIGIOT: (libc)Program Error Signals.
* sigismember: (libc)Signal Sets.
* SIGKILL: (libc)Termination Signals.
* siglongjmp: (libc)Non-Local Exits and Signals.
* SIGLOST: (libc)Operation Error Signals.
* sigmask: (libc)BSD Signal Handling.
* signal: (libc)Basic Signal Handling.
* signbit: (libc)FP Bit Twiddling.
* significandf: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* significand: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* significandl: (libc)Normalization Functions.
* sigpause: (libc)BSD Signal Handling.
* sigpending: (libc)Checking for Pending Signals.
* SIGPIPE: (libc)Operation Error Signals.
* SIGPOLL: (libc)Asynchronous I/O Signals.
* sigprocmask: (libc)Process Signal Mask.
* SIGPROF: (libc)Alarm Signals.
* SIGQUIT: (libc)Termination Signals.
* SIGSEGV: (libc)Program Error Signals.
* sigsetjmp: (libc)Non-Local Exits and Signals.
* sigsetmask: (libc)BSD Signal Handling.
* sigstack: (libc)Signal Stack.
* SIGSTOP: (libc)Job Control Signals.
* sigsuspend: (libc)Sigsuspend.
* SIGSYS: (libc)Program Error Signals.
* SIGTERM: (libc)Termination Signals.
* SIGTRAP: (libc)Program Error Signals.
* SIGTSTP: (libc)Job Control Signals.
* SIGTTIN: (libc)Job Control Signals.
* SIGTTOU: (libc)Job Control Signals.
* SIGURG: (libc)Asynchronous I/O Signals.
* SIGUSR1: (libc)Miscellaneous Signals.
* SIGUSR2: (libc)Miscellaneous Signals.
* SIGVTALRM: (libc)Alarm Signals.
* SIGWINCH: (libc)Miscellaneous Signals.
* SIGXCPU: (libc)Operation Error Signals.
* SIGXFSZ: (libc)Operation Error Signals.
* sincosf: (libc)Trig Functions.
* sincos: (libc)Trig Functions.
* sincosl: (libc)Trig Functions.
* sinf: (libc)Trig Functions.
* sinhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* sinh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* sinhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* sin: (libc)Trig Functions.
* sinl: (libc)Trig Functions.
* S_ISBLK: (libc)Testing File Type.
* S_ISCHR: (libc)Testing File Type.
* S_ISDIR: (libc)Testing File Type.
* S_ISFIFO: (libc)Testing File Type.
* S_ISLNK: (libc)Testing File Type.
* S_ISREG: (libc)Testing File Type.
* S_ISSOCK: (libc)Testing File Type.
* sleep: (libc)Sleeping.
* SNANF: (libc)Infinity and NaN.
* SNAN: (libc)Infinity and NaN.
* SNANL: (libc)Infinity and NaN.
* snprintf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions.
* SOCK_DGRAM: (libc)Communication Styles.
* socket: (libc)Creating a Socket.
* socketpair: (libc)Socket Pairs.
* SOCK_RAW: (libc)Communication Styles.
* SOCK_RDM: (libc)Communication Styles.
* SOCK_SEQPACKET: (libc)Communication Styles.
* SOCK_STREAM: (libc)Communication Styles.
* SOL_SOCKET: (libc)Socket-Level Options.
* sprintf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions.
* sqrtf: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* sqrt: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* sqrtl: (libc)Exponents and Logarithms.
* srand48: (libc)SVID Random.
* srand48_r: (libc)SVID Random.
* srand: (libc)ISO Random.
* srandom: (libc)BSD Random.
* srandom_r: (libc)BSD Random.
* sscanf: (libc)Formatted Input Functions.
* ssignal: (libc)Basic Signal Handling.
* SSIZE_MAX: (libc)General Limits.
* stat64: (libc)Reading Attributes.
* stat: (libc)Reading Attributes.
* stime: (libc)Simple Calendar Time.
* stpcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* stpncpy: (libc)Truncating Strings.
* strcasecmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison.
* strcasestr: (libc)Search Functions.
* strcat: (libc)Concatenating Strings.
* strchr: (libc)Search Functions.
* strchrnul: (libc)Search Functions.
* strcmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison.
* strcoll: (libc)Collation Functions.
* strcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* strcspn: (libc)Search Functions.
* strdupa: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* strdup: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* STREAM_MAX: (libc)General Limits.
* strerror: (libc)Error Messages.
* strerror_r: (libc)Error Messages.
* strfmon: (libc)Formatting Numbers.
* strfromd: (libc)Printing of Floats.
* strfromf: (libc)Printing of Floats.
* strfroml: (libc)Printing of Floats.
* strfry: (libc)strfry.
* strftime: (libc)Formatting Calendar Time.
* strlen: (libc)String Length.
* strncasecmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison.
* strncat: (libc)Truncating Strings.
* strncmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison.
* strncpy: (libc)Truncating Strings.
* strndupa: (libc)Truncating Strings.
* strndup: (libc)Truncating Strings.
* strnlen: (libc)String Length.
* strpbrk: (libc)Search Functions.
* strptime: (libc)Low-Level Time String Parsing.
* strrchr: (libc)Search Functions.
* strsep: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String.
* strsignal: (libc)Signal Messages.
* strspn: (libc)Search Functions.
* strstr: (libc)Search Functions.
* strtod: (libc)Parsing of Floats.
* strtof: (libc)Parsing of Floats.
* strtoimax: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* strtok: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String.
* strtok_r: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String.
* strtold: (libc)Parsing of Floats.
* strtol: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* strtoll: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* strtoq: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* strtoul: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* strtoull: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* strtoumax: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* strtouq: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* strverscmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison.
* strxfrm: (libc)Collation Functions.
* stty: (libc)BSD Terminal Modes.
* S_TYPEISMQ: (libc)Testing File Type.
* S_TYPEISSEM: (libc)Testing File Type.
* S_TYPEISSHM: (libc)Testing File Type.
* SUN_LEN: (libc)Local Namespace Details.
* swapcontext: (libc)System V contexts.
* swprintf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions.
* swscanf: (libc)Formatted Input Functions.
* symlink: (libc)Symbolic Links.
* sync: (libc)Synchronizing I/O.
* syscall: (libc)System Calls.
* sysconf: (libc)Sysconf Definition.
* sysctl: (libc)System Parameters.
* syslog: (libc)syslog; vsyslog.
* system: (libc)Running a Command.
* sysv_signal: (libc)Basic Signal Handling.
* tanf: (libc)Trig Functions.
* tanhf: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* tanh: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* tanhl: (libc)Hyperbolic Functions.
* tan: (libc)Trig Functions.
* tanl: (libc)Trig Functions.
* tcdrain: (libc)Line Control.
* tcflow: (libc)Line Control.
* tcflush: (libc)Line Control.
* tcgetattr: (libc)Mode Functions.
* tcgetpgrp: (libc)Terminal Access Functions.
* tcgetsid: (libc)Terminal Access Functions.
* tcsendbreak: (libc)Line Control.
* tcsetattr: (libc)Mode Functions.
* tcsetpgrp: (libc)Terminal Access Functions.
* tdelete: (libc)Tree Search Function.
* tdestroy: (libc)Tree Search Function.
* telldir: (libc)Random Access Directory.
* tempnam: (libc)Temporary Files.
* textdomain: (libc)Locating gettext catalog.
* tfind: (libc)Tree Search Function.
* tgammaf: (libc)Special Functions.
* tgamma: (libc)Special Functions.
* tgammal: (libc)Special Functions.
* timegm: (libc)Broken-down Time.
* time: (libc)Simple Calendar Time.
* timelocal: (libc)Broken-down Time.
* times: (libc)Processor Time.
* tmpfile64: (libc)Temporary Files.
* tmpfile: (libc)Temporary Files.
* TMP_MAX: (libc)Temporary Files.
* tmpnam: (libc)Temporary Files.
* tmpnam_r: (libc)Temporary Files.
* toascii: (libc)Case Conversion.
* _tolower: (libc)Case Conversion.
* tolower: (libc)Case Conversion.
* TOSTOP: (libc)Local Modes.
* totalorderf: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* totalorder: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* totalorderl: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* totalordermagf: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* totalordermag: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* totalordermagl: (libc)FP Comparison Functions.
* _toupper: (libc)Case Conversion.
* toupper: (libc)Case Conversion.
* towctrans: (libc)Wide Character Case Conversion.
* towlower: (libc)Wide Character Case Conversion.
* towupper: (libc)Wide Character Case Conversion.
* truncate64: (libc)File Size.
* truncate: (libc)File Size.
* truncf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* trunc: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* truncl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* tsearch: (libc)Tree Search Function.
* ttyname: (libc)Is It a Terminal.
* ttyname_r: (libc)Is It a Terminal.
* twalk: (libc)Tree Search Function.
* TZNAME_MAX: (libc)General Limits.
* tzset: (libc)Time Zone Functions.
* ufromfpf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* ufromfp: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* ufromfpl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* ufromfpxf: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* ufromfpx: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* ufromfpxl: (libc)Rounding Functions.
* ulimit: (libc)Limits on Resources.
* umask: (libc)Setting Permissions.
* umount2: (libc)Mount-Unmount-Remount.
* umount: (libc)Mount-Unmount-Remount.
* uname: (libc)Platform Type.
* ungetc: (libc)How Unread.
* ungetwc: (libc)How Unread.
* unlink: (libc)Deleting Files.
* unlockpt: (libc)Allocation.
* unsetenv: (libc)Environment Access.
* updwtmp: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* utime: (libc)File Times.
* utimes: (libc)File Times.
* utmpname: (libc)Manipulating the Database.
* utmpxname: (libc)XPG Functions.
* va_arg: (libc)Argument Macros.
* __va_copy: (libc)Argument Macros.
* va_copy: (libc)Argument Macros.
* va_end: (libc)Argument Macros.
* valloc: (libc)Aligned Memory Blocks.
* vasprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output.
* va_start: (libc)Argument Macros.
* VDISCARD: (libc)Other Special.
* VDSUSP: (libc)Signal Characters.
* VEOF: (libc)Editing Characters.
* VEOL2: (libc)Editing Characters.
* VEOL: (libc)Editing Characters.
* VERASE: (libc)Editing Characters.
* verr: (libc)Error Messages.
* verrx: (libc)Error Messages.
* versionsort64: (libc)Scanning Directory Content.
* versionsort: (libc)Scanning Directory Content.
* vfork: (libc)Creating a Process.
* vfprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output.
* vfscanf: (libc)Variable Arguments Input.
* vfwprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output.
* vfwscanf: (libc)Variable Arguments Input.
* VINTR: (libc)Signal Characters.
* VKILL: (libc)Editing Characters.
* vlimit: (libc)Limits on Resources.
* VLNEXT: (libc)Other Special.
* VMIN: (libc)Noncanonical Input.
* vprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output.
* VQUIT: (libc)Signal Characters.
* VREPRINT: (libc)Editing Characters.
* vscanf: (libc)Variable Arguments Input.
* vsnprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output.
* vsprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output.
* vsscanf: (libc)Variable Arguments Input.
* VSTART: (libc)Start/Stop Characters.
* VSTATUS: (libc)Other Special.
* VSTOP: (libc)Start/Stop Characters.
* VSUSP: (libc)Signal Characters.
* vswprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output.
* vswscanf: (libc)Variable Arguments Input.
* vsyslog: (libc)syslog; vsyslog.
* VTIME: (libc)Noncanonical Input.
* vtimes: (libc)Resource Usage.
* vwarn: (libc)Error Messages.
* vwarnx: (libc)Error Messages.
* VWERASE: (libc)Editing Characters.
* vwprintf: (libc)Variable Arguments Output.
* vwscanf: (libc)Variable Arguments Input.
* wait3: (libc)BSD Wait Functions.
* wait4: (libc)Process Completion.
* wait: (libc)Process Completion.
* waitpid: (libc)Process Completion.
* warn: (libc)Error Messages.
* warnx: (libc)Error Messages.
* WCHAR_MAX: (libc)Extended Char Intro.
* WCHAR_MIN: (libc)Extended Char Intro.
* WCOREDUMP: (libc)Process Completion Status.
* wcpcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* wcpncpy: (libc)Truncating Strings.
* wcrtomb: (libc)Converting a Character.
* wcscasecmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison.
* wcscat: (libc)Concatenating Strings.
* wcschr: (libc)Search Functions.
* wcschrnul: (libc)Search Functions.
* wcscmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison.
* wcscoll: (libc)Collation Functions.
* wcscpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* wcscspn: (libc)Search Functions.
* wcsdup: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* wcsftime: (libc)Formatting Calendar Time.
* wcslen: (libc)String Length.
* wcsncasecmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison.
* wcsncat: (libc)Truncating Strings.
* wcsncmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison.
* wcsncpy: (libc)Truncating Strings.
* wcsnlen: (libc)String Length.
* wcsnrtombs: (libc)Converting Strings.
* wcspbrk: (libc)Search Functions.
* wcsrchr: (libc)Search Functions.
* wcsrtombs: (libc)Converting Strings.
* wcsspn: (libc)Search Functions.
* wcsstr: (libc)Search Functions.
* wcstod: (libc)Parsing of Floats.
* wcstof: (libc)Parsing of Floats.
* wcstoimax: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* wcstok: (libc)Finding Tokens in a String.
* wcstold: (libc)Parsing of Floats.
* wcstol: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* wcstoll: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* wcstombs: (libc)Non-reentrant String Conversion.
* wcstoq: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* wcstoul: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* wcstoull: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* wcstoumax: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* wcstouq: (libc)Parsing of Integers.
* wcswcs: (libc)Search Functions.
* wcsxfrm: (libc)Collation Functions.
* wctob: (libc)Converting a Character.
* wctomb: (libc)Non-reentrant Character Conversion.
* wctrans: (libc)Wide Character Case Conversion.
* wctype: (libc)Classification of Wide Characters.
* WEOF: (libc)EOF and Errors.
* WEOF: (libc)Extended Char Intro.
* WEXITSTATUS: (libc)Process Completion Status.
* WIFEXITED: (libc)Process Completion Status.
* WIFSIGNALED: (libc)Process Completion Status.
* WIFSTOPPED: (libc)Process Completion Status.
* wmemchr: (libc)Search Functions.
* wmemcmp: (libc)String/Array Comparison.
* wmemcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* wmemmove: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* wmempcpy: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* wmemset: (libc)Copying Strings and Arrays.
* W_OK: (libc)Testing File Access.
* wordexp: (libc)Calling Wordexp.
* wordfree: (libc)Calling Wordexp.
* wprintf: (libc)Formatted Output Functions.
* write: (libc)I/O Primitives.
* writev: (libc)Scatter-Gather.
* wscanf: (libc)Formatted Input Functions.
* WSTOPSIG: (libc)Process Completion Status.
* WTERMSIG: (libc)Process Completion Status.
* X_OK: (libc)Testing File Access.
* y0f: (libc)Special Functions.
* y0: (libc)Special Functions.
* y0l: (libc)Special Functions.
* y1f: (libc)Special Functions.
* y1: (libc)Special Functions.
* y1l: (libc)Special Functions.
* ynf: (libc)Special Functions.
* yn: (libc)Special Functions.
* ynl: (libc)Special Functions.
END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY


File: libc.info,  Node: Converting Strings,  Next: Multibyte Conversion Example,  Prev: Converting a Character,  Up: Restartable multibyte conversion

6.3.4 Converting Multibyte and Wide Character Strings
-----------------------------------------------------

The functions described in the previous section only convert a single
character at a time.  Most operations to be performed in real-world
programs include strings and therefore the ISO C standard also defines
conversions on entire strings.  However, the defined set of functions is
quite limited; therefore, the GNU C Library contains a few extensions
that can help in some important situations.

 -- Function: size_t mbsrtowcs (wchar_t *restrict DST, const char
          **restrict SRC, size_t LEN, mbstate_t *restrict PS)
     Preliminary: | MT-Unsafe race:mbsrtowcs/!ps | AS-Unsafe corrupt
     heap lock dlopen | AC-Unsafe corrupt lock mem fd | *Note POSIX
     Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘mbsrtowcs’ function (“multibyte string restartable to wide
     character string”) converts the NUL-terminated multibyte character
     string at ‘*SRC’ into an equivalent wide character string,
     including the NUL wide character at the end.  The conversion is
     started using the state information from the object pointed to by
     PS or from an internal object of ‘mbsrtowcs’ if PS is a null
     pointer.  Before returning, the state object is updated to match
     the state after the last converted character.  The state is the
     initial state if the terminating NUL byte is reached and converted.

     If DST is not a null pointer, the result is stored in the array
     pointed to by DST; otherwise, the conversion result is not
     available since it is stored in an internal buffer.

     If LEN wide characters are stored in the array DST before reaching
     the end of the input string, the conversion stops and LEN is
     returned.  If DST is a null pointer, LEN is never checked.

     Another reason for a premature return from the function call is if
     the input string contains an invalid multibyte sequence.  In this
     case the global variable ‘errno’ is set to ‘EILSEQ’ and the
     function returns ‘(size_t) -1’.

     In all other cases the function returns the number of wide
     characters converted during this call.  If DST is not null,
     ‘mbsrtowcs’ stores in the pointer pointed to by SRC either a null
     pointer (if the NUL byte in the input string was reached) or the
     address of the byte following the last converted multibyte
     character.

     ‘mbsrtowcs’ was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90 and is
     declared in ‘wchar.h’.

   The definition of the ‘mbsrtowcs’ function has one important
limitation.  The requirement that DST has to be a NUL-terminated string
provides problems if one wants to convert buffers with text.  A buffer
is not normally a collection of NUL-terminated strings but instead a
continuous collection of lines, separated by newline characters.  Now
assume that a function to convert one line from a buffer is needed.
Since the line is not NUL-terminated, the source pointer cannot directly
point into the unmodified text buffer.  This means, either one inserts
the NUL byte at the appropriate place for the time of the ‘mbsrtowcs’
function call (which is not doable for a read-only buffer or in a
multi-threaded application) or one copies the line in an extra buffer
where it can be terminated by a NUL byte.  Note that it is not in
general possible to limit the number of characters to convert by setting
the parameter LEN to any specific value.  Since it is not known how many
bytes each multibyte character sequence is in length, one can only
guess.

   There is still a problem with the method of NUL-terminating a line
right after the newline character, which could lead to very strange
results.  As said in the description of the ‘mbsrtowcs’ function above,
the conversion state is guaranteed to be in the initial shift state
after processing the NUL byte at the end of the input string.  But this
NUL byte is not really part of the text (i.e., the conversion state
after the newline in the original text could be something different than
the initial shift state and therefore the first character of the next
line is encoded using this state).  But the state in question is never
accessible to the user since the conversion stops after the NUL byte
(which resets the state).  Most stateful character sets in use today
require that the shift state after a newline be the initial state–but
this is not a strict guarantee.  Therefore, simply NUL-terminating a
piece of a running text is not always an adequate solution and,
therefore, should never be used in generally used code.

   The generic conversion interface (*note Generic Charset Conversion::)
does not have this limitation (it simply works on buffers, not strings),
and the GNU C Library contains a set of functions that take additional
parameters specifying the maximal number of bytes that are consumed from
the input string.  This way the problem of ‘mbsrtowcs’’s example above
could be solved by determining the line length and passing this length
to the function.

 -- Function: size_t wcsrtombs (char *restrict DST, const wchar_t
          **restrict SRC, size_t LEN, mbstate_t *restrict PS)
     Preliminary: | MT-Unsafe race:wcsrtombs/!ps | AS-Unsafe corrupt
     heap lock dlopen | AC-Unsafe corrupt lock mem fd | *Note POSIX
     Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘wcsrtombs’ function (“wide character string restartable to
     multibyte string”) converts the NUL-terminated wide character
     string at ‘*SRC’ into an equivalent multibyte character string and
     stores the result in the array pointed to by DST.  The NUL wide
     character is also converted.  The conversion starts in the state
     described in the object pointed to by PS or by a state object local
     to ‘wcsrtombs’ in case PS is a null pointer.  If DST is a null
     pointer, the conversion is performed as usual but the result is not
     available.  If all characters of the input string were successfully
     converted and if DST is not a null pointer, the pointer pointed to
     by SRC gets assigned a null pointer.

     If one of the wide characters in the input string has no valid
     multibyte character equivalent, the conversion stops early, sets
     the global variable ‘errno’ to ‘EILSEQ’, and returns ‘(size_t) -1’.

     Another reason for a premature stop is if DST is not a null pointer
     and the next converted character would require more than LEN bytes
     in total to the array DST.  In this case (and if DST is not a null
     pointer) the pointer pointed to by SRC is assigned a value pointing
     to the wide character right after the last one successfully
     converted.

     Except in the case of an encoding error the return value of the
     ‘wcsrtombs’ function is the number of bytes in all the multibyte
     character sequences stored in DST.  Before returning, the state in
     the object pointed to by PS (or the internal object in case PS is a
     null pointer) is updated to reflect the state after the last
     conversion.  The state is the initial shift state in case the
     terminating NUL wide character was converted.

     The ‘wcsrtombs’ function was introduced in Amendment 1 to ISO C90
     and is declared in ‘wchar.h’.

   The restriction mentioned above for the ‘mbsrtowcs’ function applies
here also.  There is no possibility of directly controlling the number
of input characters.  One has to place the NUL wide character at the
correct place or control the consumed input indirectly via the available
output array size (the LEN parameter).

 -- Function: size_t mbsnrtowcs (wchar_t *restrict DST, const char
          **restrict SRC, size_t NMC, size_t LEN, mbstate_t *restrict
          PS)
     Preliminary: | MT-Unsafe race:mbsnrtowcs/!ps | AS-Unsafe corrupt
     heap lock dlopen | AC-Unsafe corrupt lock mem fd | *Note POSIX
     Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘mbsnrtowcs’ function is very similar to the ‘mbsrtowcs’
     function.  All the parameters are the same except for NMC, which is
     new.  The return value is the same as for ‘mbsrtowcs’.

     This new parameter specifies how many bytes at most can be used
     from the multibyte character string.  In other words, the multibyte
     character string ‘*SRC’ need not be NUL-terminated.  But if a NUL
     byte is found within the NMC first bytes of the string, the
     conversion stops there.

     This function is a GNU extension.  It is meant to work around the
     problems mentioned above.  Now it is possible to convert a buffer
     with multibyte character text piece by piece without having to care
     about inserting NUL bytes and the effect of NUL bytes on the
     conversion state.

   A function to convert a multibyte string into a wide character string
and display it could be written like this (this is not a really useful
example):

     void
     showmbs (const char *src, FILE *fp)
     {
       mbstate_t state;
       int cnt = 0;
       memset (&state, '\0', sizeof (state));
       while (1)
         {
           wchar_t linebuf[100];
           const char *endp = strchr (src, '\n');
           size_t n;

           /* Exit if there is no more line.  */
           if (endp == NULL)
             break;

           n = mbsnrtowcs (linebuf, &src, endp - src, 99, &state);
           linebuf[n] = L'\0';
           fprintf (fp, "line %d: \"%S\"\n", linebuf);
         }
     }

   There is no problem with the state after a call to ‘mbsnrtowcs’.
Since we don’t insert characters in the strings that were not in there
right from the beginning and we use STATE only for the conversion of the
given buffer, there is no problem with altering the state.

 -- Function: size_t wcsnrtombs (char *restrict DST, const wchar_t
          **restrict SRC, size_t NWC, size_t LEN, mbstate_t *restrict
          PS)
     Preliminary: | MT-Unsafe race:wcsnrtombs/!ps | AS-Unsafe corrupt
     heap lock dlopen | AC-Unsafe corrupt lock mem fd | *Note POSIX
     Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘wcsnrtombs’ function implements the conversion from wide
     character strings to multibyte character strings.  It is similar to
     ‘wcsrtombs’ but, just like ‘mbsnrtowcs’, it takes an extra
     parameter, which specifies the length of the input string.

     No more than NWC wide characters from the input string ‘*SRC’ are
     converted.  If the input string contains a NUL wide character in
     the first NWC characters, the conversion stops at this place.

     The ‘wcsnrtombs’ function is a GNU extension and just like
     ‘mbsnrtowcs’ helps in situations where no NUL-terminated input
     strings are available.


File: libc.info,  Node: Multibyte Conversion Example,  Prev: Converting Strings,  Up: Restartable multibyte conversion

6.3.5 A Complete Multibyte Conversion Example
---------------------------------------------

The example programs given in the last sections are only brief and do
not contain all the error checking, etc.  Presented here is a complete
and documented example.  It features the ‘mbrtowc’ function but it
should be easy to derive versions using the other functions.

     int
     file_mbsrtowcs (int input, int output)
     {
       /* Note the use of ‘MB_LEN_MAX’.
          ‘MB_CUR_MAX’ cannot portably be used here.  */
       char buffer[BUFSIZ + MB_LEN_MAX];
       mbstate_t state;
       int filled = 0;
       int eof = 0;

       /* Initialize the state.  */
       memset (&state, '\0', sizeof (state));

       while (!eof)
         {
           ssize_t nread;
           ssize_t nwrite;
           char *inp = buffer;
           wchar_t outbuf[BUFSIZ];
           wchar_t *outp = outbuf;

           /* Fill up the buffer from the input file.  */
           nread = read (input, buffer + filled, BUFSIZ);
           if (nread < 0)
             {
               perror ("read");
               return 0;
             }
           /* If we reach end of file, make a note to read no more. */
           if (nread == 0)
             eof = 1;

           /* ‘filled’ is now the number of bytes in ‘buffer’. */
           filled += nread;

           /* Convert those bytes to wide characters–as many as we can. */
           while (1)
             {
               size_t thislen = mbrtowc (outp, inp, filled, &state);
               /* Stop converting at invalid character;
                  this can mean we have read just the first part
                  of a valid character.  */
               if (thislen == (size_t) -1)
                 break;
               /* We want to handle embedded NUL bytes
                  but the return value is 0.  Correct this.  */
               if (thislen == 0)
                 thislen = 1;
               /* Advance past this character. */
               inp += thislen;
               filled -= thislen;
               ++outp;
             }

           /* Write the wide characters we just made.  */
           nwrite = write (output, outbuf,
                           (outp - outbuf) * sizeof (wchar_t));
           if (nwrite < 0)
             {
               perror ("write");
               return 0;
             }

           /* See if we have a _real_ invalid character. */
           if ((eof && filled > 0) || filled >= MB_CUR_MAX)
             {
               error (0, 0, "invalid multibyte character");
               return 0;
             }

           /* If any characters must be carried forward,
              put them at the beginning of ‘buffer’. */
           if (filled > 0)
             memmove (buffer, inp, filled);
         }

       return 1;
     }


File: libc.info,  Node: Non-reentrant Conversion,  Next: Generic Charset Conversion,  Prev: Restartable multibyte conversion,  Up: Character Set Handling

6.4 Non-reentrant Conversion Function
=====================================

The functions described in the previous chapter are defined in Amendment 1
to ISO C90, but the original ISO C90 standard also contained functions
for character set conversion.  The reason that these original functions
are not described first is that they are almost entirely useless.

   The problem is that all the conversion functions described in the
original ISO C90 use a local state.  Using a local state implies that
multiple conversions at the same time (not only when using threads)
cannot be done, and that you cannot first convert single characters and
then strings since you cannot tell the conversion functions which state
to use.

   These original functions are therefore usable only in a very limited
set of situations.  One must complete converting the entire string
before starting a new one, and each string/text must be converted with
the same function (there is no problem with the library itself; it is
guaranteed that no library function changes the state of any of these
functions).  *For the above reasons it is highly requested that the
functions described in the previous section be used in place of
non-reentrant conversion functions.*

* Menu:

* Non-reentrant Character Conversion::  Non-reentrant Conversion of Single
                                         Characters.
* Non-reentrant String Conversion::     Non-reentrant Conversion of Strings.
* Shift State::                         States in Non-reentrant Functions.


File: libc.info,  Node: Non-reentrant Character Conversion,  Next: Non-reentrant String Conversion,  Up: Non-reentrant Conversion

6.4.1 Non-reentrant Conversion of Single Characters
---------------------------------------------------

 -- Function: int mbtowc (wchar_t *restrict RESULT, const char *restrict
          STRING, size_t SIZE)
     Preliminary: | MT-Unsafe race | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen
     | AC-Unsafe corrupt lock mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘mbtowc’ (“multibyte to wide character”) function when called
     with non-null STRING converts the first multibyte character
     beginning at STRING to its corresponding wide character code.  It
     stores the result in ‘*RESULT’.

     ‘mbtowc’ never examines more than SIZE bytes.  (The idea is to
     supply for SIZE the number of bytes of data you have in hand.)

     ‘mbtowc’ with non-null STRING distinguishes three possibilities:
     the first SIZE bytes at STRING start with valid multibyte
     characters, they start with an invalid byte sequence or just part
     of a character, or STRING points to an empty string (a null
     character).

     For a valid multibyte character, ‘mbtowc’ converts it to a wide
     character and stores that in ‘*RESULT’, and returns the number of
     bytes in that character (always at least 1 and never more than
     SIZE).

     For an invalid byte sequence, ‘mbtowc’ returns -1.  For an empty
     string, it returns 0, also storing ‘'\0'’ in ‘*RESULT’.

     If the multibyte character code uses shift characters, then
     ‘mbtowc’ maintains and updates a shift state as it scans.  If you
     call ‘mbtowc’ with a null pointer for STRING, that initializes the
     shift state to its standard initial value.  It also returns nonzero
     if the multibyte character code in use actually has a shift state.
     *Note Shift State::.

 -- Function: int wctomb (char *STRING, wchar_t WCHAR)
     Preliminary: | MT-Unsafe race | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen
     | AC-Unsafe corrupt lock mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘wctomb’ (“wide character to multibyte”) function converts the
     wide character code WCHAR to its corresponding multibyte character
     sequence, and stores the result in bytes starting at STRING.  At
     most ‘MB_CUR_MAX’ characters are stored.

     ‘wctomb’ with non-null STRING distinguishes three possibilities for
     WCHAR: a valid wide character code (one that can be translated to a
     multibyte character), an invalid code, and ‘L'\0'’.

     Given a valid code, ‘wctomb’ converts it to a multibyte character,
     storing the bytes starting at STRING.  Then it returns the number
     of bytes in that character (always at least 1 and never more than
     ‘MB_CUR_MAX’).

     If WCHAR is an invalid wide character code, ‘wctomb’ returns -1.
     If WCHAR is ‘L'\0'’, it returns ‘0’, also storing ‘'\0'’ in
     ‘*STRING’.

     If the multibyte character code uses shift characters, then
     ‘wctomb’ maintains and updates a shift state as it scans.  If you
     call ‘wctomb’ with a null pointer for STRING, that initializes the
     shift state to its standard initial value.  It also returns nonzero
     if the multibyte character code in use actually has a shift state.
     *Note Shift State::.

     Calling this function with a WCHAR argument of zero when STRING is
     not null has the side-effect of reinitializing the stored shift
     state _as well as_ storing the multibyte character ‘'\0'’ and
     returning 0.

   Similar to ‘mbrlen’ there is also a non-reentrant function that
computes the length of a multibyte character.  It can be defined in
terms of ‘mbtowc’.

 -- Function: int mblen (const char *STRING, size_t SIZE)
     Preliminary: | MT-Unsafe race | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen
     | AC-Unsafe corrupt lock mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘mblen’ function with a non-null STRING argument returns the
     number of bytes that make up the multibyte character beginning at
     STRING, never examining more than SIZE bytes.  (The idea is to
     supply for SIZE the number of bytes of data you have in hand.)

     The return value of ‘mblen’ distinguishes three possibilities: the
     first SIZE bytes at STRING start with valid multibyte characters,
     they start with an invalid byte sequence or just part of a
     character, or STRING points to an empty string (a null character).

     For a valid multibyte character, ‘mblen’ returns the number of
     bytes in that character (always at least ‘1’ and never more than
     SIZE).  For an invalid byte sequence, ‘mblen’ returns -1.  For an
     empty string, it returns 0.

     If the multibyte character code uses shift characters, then ‘mblen’
     maintains and updates a shift state as it scans.  If you call
     ‘mblen’ with a null pointer for STRING, that initializes the shift
     state to its standard initial value.  It also returns a nonzero
     value if the multibyte character code in use actually has a shift
     state.  *Note Shift State::.

     The function ‘mblen’ is declared in ‘stdlib.h’.


File: libc.info,  Node: Non-reentrant String Conversion,  Next: Shift State,  Prev: Non-reentrant Character Conversion,  Up: Non-reentrant Conversion

6.4.2 Non-reentrant Conversion of Strings
-----------------------------------------

For convenience the ISO C90 standard also defines functions to convert
entire strings instead of single characters.  These functions suffer
from the same problems as their reentrant counterparts from Amendment 1
to ISO C90; see *note Converting Strings::.

 -- Function: size_t mbstowcs (wchar_t *WSTRING, const char *STRING,
          size_t SIZE)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen |
     AC-Unsafe corrupt lock mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘mbstowcs’ (“multibyte string to wide character string”)
     function converts the null-terminated string of multibyte
     characters STRING to an array of wide character codes, storing not
     more than SIZE wide characters into the array beginning at WSTRING.
     The terminating null character counts towards the size, so if SIZE
     is less than the actual number of wide characters resulting from
     STRING, no terminating null character is stored.

     The conversion of characters from STRING begins in the initial
     shift state.

     If an invalid multibyte character sequence is found, the ‘mbstowcs’
     function returns a value of -1.  Otherwise, it returns the number
     of wide characters stored in the array WSTRING.  This number does
     not include the terminating null character, which is present if the
     number is less than SIZE.

     Here is an example showing how to convert a string of multibyte
     characters, allocating enough space for the result.

          wchar_t *
          mbstowcs_alloc (const char *string)
          {
            size_t size = strlen (string) + 1;
            wchar_t *buf = xmalloc (size * sizeof (wchar_t));

            size = mbstowcs (buf, string, size);
            if (size == (size_t) -1)
              return NULL;
            buf = xrealloc (buf, (size + 1) * sizeof (wchar_t));
            return buf;
          }

 -- Function: size_t wcstombs (char *STRING, const wchar_t *WSTRING,
          size_t SIZE)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen |
     AC-Unsafe corrupt lock mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘wcstombs’ (“wide character string to multibyte string”)
     function converts the null-terminated wide character array WSTRING
     into a string containing multibyte characters, storing not more
     than SIZE bytes starting at STRING, followed by a terminating null
     character if there is room.  The conversion of characters begins in
     the initial shift state.

     The terminating null character counts towards the size, so if SIZE
     is less than or equal to the number of bytes needed in WSTRING, no
     terminating null character is stored.

     If a code that does not correspond to a valid multibyte character
     is found, the ‘wcstombs’ function returns a value of -1.
     Otherwise, the return value is the number of bytes stored in the
     array STRING.  This number does not include the terminating null
     character, which is present if the number is less than SIZE.


File: libc.info,  Node: Shift State,  Prev: Non-reentrant String Conversion,  Up: Non-reentrant Conversion

6.4.3 States in Non-reentrant Functions
---------------------------------------

In some multibyte character codes, the _meaning_ of any particular byte
sequence is not fixed; it depends on what other sequences have come
earlier in the same string.  Typically there are just a few sequences
that can change the meaning of other sequences; these few are called
"shift sequences" and we say that they set the "shift state" for other
sequences that follow.

   To illustrate shift state and shift sequences, suppose we decide that
the sequence ‘0200’ (just one byte) enters Japanese mode, in which pairs
of bytes in the range from ‘0240’ to ‘0377’ are single characters, while
‘0201’ enters Latin-1 mode, in which single bytes in the range from
‘0240’ to ‘0377’ are characters, and interpreted according to the ISO
Latin-1 character set.  This is a multibyte code that has two
alternative shift states (“Japanese mode” and “Latin-1 mode”), and two
shift sequences that specify particular shift states.

   When the multibyte character code in use has shift states, then
‘mblen’, ‘mbtowc’, and ‘wctomb’ must maintain and update the current
shift state as they scan the string.  To make this work properly, you
must follow these rules:

   • Before starting to scan a string, call the function with a null
     pointer for the multibyte character address—for example, ‘mblen
     (NULL, 0)’.  This initializes the shift state to its standard
     initial value.

   • Scan the string one character at a time, in order.  Do not “back
     up” and rescan characters already scanned, and do not intersperse
     the processing of different strings.

   Here is an example of using ‘mblen’ following these rules:

     void
     scan_string (char *s)
     {
       int length = strlen (s);

       /* Initialize shift state.  */
       mblen (NULL, 0);

       while (1)
         {
           int thischar = mblen (s, length);
           /* Deal with end of string and invalid characters.  */
           if (thischar == 0)
             break;
           if (thischar == -1)
             {
               error ("invalid multibyte character");
               break;
             }
           /* Advance past this character.  */
           s += thischar;
           length -= thischar;
         }
     }

   The functions ‘mblen’, ‘mbtowc’ and ‘wctomb’ are not reentrant when
using a multibyte code that uses a shift state.  However, no other
library functions call these functions, so you don’t have to worry that
the shift state will be changed mysteriously.


File: libc.info,  Node: Generic Charset Conversion,  Prev: Non-reentrant Conversion,  Up: Character Set Handling

6.5 Generic Charset Conversion
==============================

The conversion functions mentioned so far in this chapter all had in
common that they operate on character sets that are not directly
specified by the functions.  The multibyte encoding used is specified by
the currently selected locale for the ‘LC_CTYPE’ category.  The wide
character set is fixed by the implementation (in the case of the GNU C
Library it is always UCS-4 encoded ISO 10646).

   This has of course several problems when it comes to general
character conversion:

   • For every conversion where neither the source nor the destination
     character set is the character set of the locale for the ‘LC_CTYPE’
     category, one has to change the ‘LC_CTYPE’ locale using
     ‘setlocale’.

     Changing the ‘LC_CTYPE’ locale introduces major problems for the
     rest of the programs since several more functions (e.g., the
     character classification functions, *note Classification of
     Characters::) use the ‘LC_CTYPE’ category.

   • Parallel conversions to and from different character sets are not
     possible since the ‘LC_CTYPE’ selection is global and shared by all
     threads.

   • If neither the source nor the destination character set is the
     character set used for ‘wchar_t’ representation, there is at least
     a two-step process necessary to convert a text using the functions
     above.  One would have to select the source character set as the
     multibyte encoding, convert the text into a ‘wchar_t’ text, select
     the destination character set as the multibyte encoding, and
     convert the wide character text to the multibyte (= destination)
     character set.

     Even if this is possible (which is not guaranteed) it is a very
     tiring work.  Plus it suffers from the other two raised points even
     more due to the steady changing of the locale.

   The XPG2 standard defines a completely new set of functions, which
has none of these limitations.  They are not at all coupled to the
selected locales, and they have no constraints on the character sets
selected for source and destination.  Only the set of available
conversions limits them.  The standard does not specify that any
conversion at all must be available.  Such availability is a measure of
the quality of the implementation.

   In the following text first the interface to ‘iconv’ and then the
conversion function, will be described.  Comparisons with other
implementations will show what obstacles stand in the way of portable
applications.  Finally, the implementation is described in so far as
might interest the advanced user who wants to extend conversion
capabilities.

* Menu:

* Generic Conversion Interface::    Generic Character Set Conversion Interface.
* iconv Examples::                  A complete ‘iconv’ example.
* Other iconv Implementations::     Some Details about other ‘iconv’
                                     Implementations.
* glibc iconv Implementation::      The ‘iconv’ Implementation in the GNU C
                                     library.


File: libc.info,  Node: Generic Conversion Interface,  Next: iconv Examples,  Up: Generic Charset Conversion

6.5.1 Generic Character Set Conversion Interface
------------------------------------------------

This set of functions follows the traditional cycle of using a resource:
open–use–close.  The interface consists of three functions, each of
which implements one step.

   Before the interfaces are described it is necessary to introduce a
data type.  Just like other open–use–close interfaces the functions
introduced here work using handles and the ‘iconv.h’ header defines a
special type for the handles used.

 -- Data Type: iconv_t
     This data type is an abstract type defined in ‘iconv.h’.  The user
     must not assume anything about the definition of this type; it must
     be completely opaque.

     Objects of this type can be assigned handles for the conversions
     using the ‘iconv’ functions.  The objects themselves need not be
     freed, but the conversions for which the handles stand for have to.

The first step is the function to create a handle.

 -- Function: iconv_t iconv_open (const char *TOCODE, const char
          *FROMCODE)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe locale | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen
     | AC-Unsafe corrupt lock mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘iconv_open’ function has to be used before starting a
     conversion.  The two parameters this function takes determine the
     source and destination character set for the conversion, and if the
     implementation has the possibility to perform such a conversion,
     the function returns a handle.

     If the wanted conversion is not available, the ‘iconv_open’
     function returns ‘(iconv_t) -1’.  In this case the global variable
     ‘errno’ can have the following values:

     ‘EMFILE’
          The process already has ‘OPEN_MAX’ file descriptors open.
     ‘ENFILE’
          The system limit of open files is reached.
     ‘ENOMEM’
          Not enough memory to carry out the operation.
     ‘EINVAL’
          The conversion from FROMCODE to TOCODE is not supported.

     It is not possible to use the same descriptor in different threads
     to perform independent conversions.  The data structures associated
     with the descriptor include information about the conversion state.
     This must not be messed up by using it in different conversions.

     An ‘iconv’ descriptor is like a file descriptor as for every use a
     new descriptor must be created.  The descriptor does not stand for
     all of the conversions from FROMSET to TOSET.

     The GNU C Library implementation of ‘iconv_open’ has one
     significant extension to other implementations.  To ease the
     extension of the set of available conversions, the implementation
     allows storing the necessary files with data and code in an
     arbitrary number of directories.  How this extension must be
     written will be explained below (*note glibc iconv
     Implementation::).  Here it is only important to say that all
     directories mentioned in the ‘GCONV_PATH’ environment variable are
     considered only if they contain a file ‘gconv-modules’.  These
     directories need not necessarily be created by the system
     administrator.  In fact, this extension is introduced to help users
     writing and using their own, new conversions.  Of course, this does
     not work for security reasons in SUID binaries; in this case only
     the system directory is considered and this normally is
     ‘PREFIX/lib/gconv’.  The ‘GCONV_PATH’ environment variable is
     examined exactly once at the first call of the ‘iconv_open’
     function.  Later modifications of the variable have no effect.

     The ‘iconv_open’ function was introduced early in the X/Open
     Portability Guide, version 2.  It is supported by all commercial
     Unices as it is required for the Unix branding.  However, the
     quality and completeness of the implementation varies widely.  The
     ‘iconv_open’ function is declared in ‘iconv.h’.

   The ‘iconv’ implementation can associate large data structure with
the handle returned by ‘iconv_open’.  Therefore, it is crucial to free
all the resources once all conversions are carried out and the
conversion is not needed anymore.

 -- Function: int iconv_close (iconv_t CD)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen |
     AC-Unsafe corrupt lock mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘iconv_close’ function frees all resources associated with the
     handle CD, which must have been returned by a successful call to
     the ‘iconv_open’ function.

     If the function call was successful the return value is 0.
     Otherwise it is -1 and ‘errno’ is set appropriately.  Defined
     errors are:

     ‘EBADF’
          The conversion descriptor is invalid.

     The ‘iconv_close’ function was introduced together with the rest of
     the ‘iconv’ functions in XPG2 and is declared in ‘iconv.h’.

   The standard defines only one actual conversion function.  This has,
therefore, the most general interface: it allows conversion from one
buffer to another.  Conversion from a file to a buffer, vice versa, or
even file to file can be implemented on top of it.

 -- Function: size_t iconv (iconv_t CD, char **INBUF, size_t
          *INBYTESLEFT, char **OUTBUF, size_t *OUTBYTESLEFT)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe race:cd | AS-Safe | AC-Unsafe corrupt |
     *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘iconv’ function converts the text in the input buffer
     according to the rules associated with the descriptor CD and stores
     the result in the output buffer.  It is possible to call the
     function for the same text several times in a row since for
     stateful character sets the necessary state information is kept in
     the data structures associated with the descriptor.

     The input buffer is specified by ‘*INBUF’ and it contains
     ‘*INBYTESLEFT’ bytes.  The extra indirection is necessary for
     communicating the used input back to the caller (see below).  It is
     important to note that the buffer pointer is of type ‘char’ and the
     length is measured in bytes even if the input text is encoded in
     wide characters.

     The output buffer is specified in a similar way.  ‘*OUTBUF’ points
     to the beginning of the buffer with at least ‘*OUTBYTESLEFT’ bytes
     room for the result.  The buffer pointer again is of type ‘char’
     and the length is measured in bytes.  If OUTBUF or ‘*OUTBUF’ is a
     null pointer, the conversion is performed but no output is
     available.

     If INBUF is a null pointer, the ‘iconv’ function performs the
     necessary action to put the state of the conversion into the
     initial state.  This is obviously a no-op for non-stateful
     encodings, but if the encoding has a state, such a function call
     might put some byte sequences in the output buffer, which perform
     the necessary state changes.  The next call with INBUF not being a
     null pointer then simply goes on from the initial state.  It is
     important that the programmer never makes any assumption as to
     whether the conversion has to deal with states.  Even if the input
     and output character sets are not stateful, the implementation
     might still have to keep states.  This is due to the implementation
     chosen for the GNU C Library as it is described below.  Therefore
     an ‘iconv’ call to reset the state should always be performed if
     some protocol requires this for the output text.

     The conversion stops for one of three reasons.  The first is that
     all characters from the input buffer are converted.  This actually
     can mean two things: either all bytes from the input buffer are
     consumed or there are some bytes at the end of the buffer that
     possibly can form a complete character but the input is incomplete.
     The second reason for a stop is that the output buffer is full.
     And the third reason is that the input contains invalid characters.

     In all of these cases the buffer pointers after the last successful
     conversion, for the input and output buffers, are stored in INBUF
     and OUTBUF, and the available room in each buffer is stored in
     INBYTESLEFT and OUTBYTESLEFT.

     Since the character sets selected in the ‘iconv_open’ call can be
     almost arbitrary, there can be situations where the input buffer
     contains valid characters, which have no identical representation
     in the output character set.  The behavior in this situation is
     undefined.  The _current_ behavior of the GNU C Library in this
     situation is to return with an error immediately.  This certainly
     is not the most desirable solution; therefore, future versions will
     provide better ones, but they are not yet finished.

     If all input from the input buffer is successfully converted and
     stored in the output buffer, the function returns the number of
     non-reversible conversions performed.  In all other cases the
     return value is ‘(size_t) -1’ and ‘errno’ is set appropriately.  In
     such cases the value pointed to by INBYTESLEFT is nonzero.

     ‘EILSEQ’
          The conversion stopped because of an invalid byte sequence in
          the input.  After the call, ‘*INBUF’ points at the first byte
          of the invalid byte sequence.

     ‘E2BIG’
          The conversion stopped because it ran out of space in the
          output buffer.

     ‘EINVAL’
          The conversion stopped because of an incomplete byte sequence
          at the end of the input buffer.

     ‘EBADF’
          The CD argument is invalid.

     The ‘iconv’ function was introduced in the XPG2 standard and is
     declared in the ‘iconv.h’ header.

   The definition of the ‘iconv’ function is quite good overall.  It
provides quite flexible functionality.  The only problems lie in the
boundary cases, which are incomplete byte sequences at the end of the
input buffer and invalid input.  A third problem, which is not really a
design problem, is the way conversions are selected.  The standard does
not say anything about the legitimate names, a minimal set of available
conversions.  We will see how this negatively impacts other
implementations, as demonstrated below.


File: libc.info,  Node: iconv Examples,  Next: Other iconv Implementations,  Prev: Generic Conversion Interface,  Up: Generic Charset Conversion

6.5.2 A complete ‘iconv’ example
--------------------------------

The example below features a solution for a common problem.  Given that
one knows the internal encoding used by the system for ‘wchar_t’
strings, one often is in the position to read text from a file and store
it in wide character buffers.  One can do this using ‘mbsrtowcs’, but
then we run into the problems discussed above.

     int
     file2wcs (int fd, const char *charset, wchar_t *outbuf, size_t avail)
     {
       char inbuf[BUFSIZ];
       size_t insize = 0;
       char *wrptr = (char *) outbuf;
       int result = 0;
       iconv_t cd;

       cd = iconv_open ("WCHAR_T", charset);
       if (cd == (iconv_t) -1)
         {
           /* Something went wrong.  */
           if (errno == EINVAL)
             error (0, 0, "conversion from '%s' to wchar_t not available",
                    charset);
           else
             perror ("iconv_open");

           /* Terminate the output string.  */
           *outbuf = L'\0';

           return -1;
         }

       while (avail > 0)
         {
           size_t nread;
           size_t nconv;
           char *inptr = inbuf;

           /* Read more input.  */
           nread = read (fd, inbuf + insize, sizeof (inbuf) - insize);
           if (nread == 0)
             {
               /* When we come here the file is completely read.
                  This still could mean there are some unused
                  characters in the ‘inbuf’.  Put them back.  */
               if (lseek (fd, -insize, SEEK_CUR) == -1)
                 result = -1;

               /* Now write out the byte sequence to get into the
                  initial state if this is necessary.  */
               iconv (cd, NULL, NULL, &wrptr, &avail);

               break;
             }
           insize += nread;

           /* Do the conversion.  */
           nconv = iconv (cd, &inptr, &insize, &wrptr, &avail);
           if (nconv == (size_t) -1)
             {
               /* Not everything went right.  It might only be
                  an unfinished byte sequence at the end of the
                  buffer.  Or it is a real problem.  */
               if (errno == EINVAL)
                 /* This is harmless.  Simply move the unused
                    bytes to the beginning of the buffer so that
                    they can be used in the next round.  */
                 memmove (inbuf, inptr, insize);
               else
                 {
                   /* It is a real problem.  Maybe we ran out of
                      space in the output buffer or we have invalid
                      input.  In any case back the file pointer to
                      the position of the last processed byte.  */
                   lseek (fd, -insize, SEEK_CUR);
                   result = -1;
                   break;
                 }
             }
         }

       /* Terminate the output string.  */
       if (avail >= sizeof (wchar_t))
         *((wchar_t *) wrptr) = L'\0';

       if (iconv_close (cd) != 0)
         perror ("iconv_close");

       return (wchar_t *) wrptr - outbuf;
     }

   This example shows the most important aspects of using the ‘iconv’
functions.  It shows how successive calls to ‘iconv’ can be used to
convert large amounts of text.  The user does not have to care about
stateful encodings as the functions take care of everything.

   An interesting point is the case where ‘iconv’ returns an error and
‘errno’ is set to ‘EINVAL’.  This is not really an error in the
transformation.  It can happen whenever the input character set contains
byte sequences of more than one byte for some character and texts are
not processed in one piece.  In this case there is a chance that a
multibyte sequence is cut.  The caller can then simply read the
remainder of the takes and feed the offending bytes together with new
character from the input to ‘iconv’ and continue the work.  The internal
state kept in the descriptor is _not_ unspecified after such an event as
is the case with the conversion functions from the ISO C standard.

   The example also shows the problem of using wide character strings
with ‘iconv’.  As explained in the description of the ‘iconv’ function
above, the function always takes a pointer to a ‘char’ array and the
available space is measured in bytes.  In the example, the output buffer
is a wide character buffer; therefore, we use a local variable WRPTR of
type ‘char *’, which is used in the ‘iconv’ calls.

   This looks rather innocent but can lead to problems on platforms that
have tight restriction on alignment.  Therefore the caller of ‘iconv’
has to make sure that the pointers passed are suitable for access of
characters from the appropriate character set.  Since, in the above
case, the input parameter to the function is a ‘wchar_t’ pointer, this
is the case (unless the user violates alignment when computing the
parameter).  But in other situations, especially when writing generic
functions where one does not know what type of character set one uses
and, therefore, treats text as a sequence of bytes, it might become
tricky.


File: libc.info,  Node: Other iconv Implementations,  Next: glibc iconv Implementation,  Prev: iconv Examples,  Up: Generic Charset Conversion

6.5.3 Some Details about other ‘iconv’ Implementations
------------------------------------------------------

This is not really the place to discuss the ‘iconv’ implementation of
other systems but it is necessary to know a bit about them to write
portable programs.  The above mentioned problems with the specification
of the ‘iconv’ functions can lead to portability issues.

   The first thing to notice is that, due to the large number of
character sets in use, it is certainly not practical to encode the
conversions directly in the C library.  Therefore, the conversion
information must come from files outside the C library.  This is usually
done in one or both of the following ways:

   • The C library contains a set of generic conversion functions that
     can read the needed conversion tables and other information from
     data files.  These files get loaded when necessary.

     This solution is problematic as it requires a great deal of effort
     to apply to all character sets (potentially an infinite set).  The
     differences in the structure of the different character sets is so
     large that many different variants of the table-processing
     functions must be developed.  In addition, the generic nature of
     these functions make them slower than specifically implemented
     functions.

   • The C library only contains a framework that can dynamically load
     object files and execute the conversion functions contained
     therein.

     This solution provides much more flexibility.  The C library itself
     contains only very little code and therefore reduces the general
     memory footprint.  Also, with a documented interface between the C
     library and the loadable modules it is possible for third parties
     to extend the set of available conversion modules.  A drawback of
     this solution is that dynamic loading must be available.

   Some implementations in commercial Unices implement a mixture of
these possibilities; the majority implement only the second solution.
Using loadable modules moves the code out of the library itself and
keeps the door open for extensions and improvements, but this design is
also limiting on some platforms since not many platforms support dynamic
loading in statically linked programs.  On platforms without this
capability it is therefore not possible to use this interface in
statically linked programs.  The GNU C Library has, on ELF platforms, no
problems with dynamic loading in these situations; therefore, this point
is moot.  The danger is that one gets acquainted with this situation and
forgets about the restrictions on other systems.

   A second thing to know about other ‘iconv’ implementations is that
the number of available conversions is often very limited.  Some
implementations provide, in the standard release (not special
international or developer releases), at most 100 to 200 conversion
possibilities.  This does not mean 200 different character sets are
supported; for example, conversions from one character set to a set of
10 others might count as 10 conversions.  Together with the other
direction this makes 20 conversion possibilities used up by one
character set.  One can imagine the thin coverage these platforms
provide.  Some Unix vendors even provide only a handful of conversions,
which renders them useless for almost all uses.

   This directly leads to a third and probably the most problematic
point.  The way the ‘iconv’ conversion functions are implemented on all
known Unix systems and the availability of the conversion functions from
character set A to B and the conversion from B to C does _not_ imply
that the conversion from A to C is available.

   This might not seem unreasonable and problematic at first, but it is
a quite big problem as one will notice shortly after hitting it.  To
show the problem we assume to write a program that has to convert from A
to C.  A call like

     cd = iconv_open ("C", "A");

fails according to the assumption above.  But what does the program do
now?  The conversion is necessary; therefore, simply giving up is not an
option.

   This is a nuisance.  The ‘iconv’ function should take care of this.
But how should the program proceed from here on?  If it tries to convert
to character set B, first the two ‘iconv_open’ calls

     cd1 = iconv_open ("B", "A");

and

     cd2 = iconv_open ("C", "B");

will succeed, but how to find B?

   Unfortunately, the answer is: there is no general solution.  On some
systems guessing might help.  On those systems most character sets can
convert to and from UTF-8 encoded ISO 10646 or Unicode text.  Besides
this only some very system-specific methods can help.  Since the
conversion functions come from loadable modules and these modules must
be stored somewhere in the filesystem, one _could_ try to find them and
determine from the available file which conversions are available and
whether there is an indirect route from A to C.

   This example shows one of the design errors of ‘iconv’ mentioned
above.  It should at least be possible to determine the list of
available conversions programmatically so that if ‘iconv_open’ says
there is no such conversion, one could make sure this also is true for
indirect routes.


File: libc.info,  Node: glibc iconv Implementation,  Prev: Other iconv Implementations,  Up: Generic Charset Conversion

6.5.4 The ‘iconv’ Implementation in the GNU C Library
-----------------------------------------------------

After reading about the problems of ‘iconv’ implementations in the last
section it is certainly good to note that the implementation in the GNU
C Library has none of the problems mentioned above.  What follows is a
step-by-step analysis of the points raised above.  The evaluation is
based on the current state of the development (as of January 1999).  The
development of the ‘iconv’ functions is not complete, but basic
functionality has solidified.

   The GNU C Library’s ‘iconv’ implementation uses shared loadable
modules to implement the conversions.  A very small number of
conversions are built into the library itself but these are only rather
trivial conversions.

   All the benefits of loadable modules are available in the GNU C
Library implementation.  This is especially appealing since the
interface is well documented (see below), and it, therefore, is easy to
write new conversion modules.  The drawback of using loadable objects is
not a problem in the GNU C Library, at least on ELF systems.  Since the
library is able to load shared objects even in statically linked
binaries, static linking need not be forbidden in case one wants to use
‘iconv’.

   The second mentioned problem is the number of supported conversions.
Currently, the GNU C Library supports more than 150 character sets.  The
way the implementation is designed the number of supported conversions
is greater than 22350 (150 times 149).  If any conversion from or to a
character set is missing, it can be added easily.

   Particularly impressive as it may be, this high number is due to the
fact that the GNU C Library implementation of ‘iconv’ does not have the
third problem mentioned above (i.e., whenever there is a conversion from
a character set A to B and from B to C it is always possible to convert
from A to C directly).  If the ‘iconv_open’ returns an error and sets
‘errno’ to ‘EINVAL’, there is no known way, directly or indirectly, to
perform the wanted conversion.

   Triangulation is achieved by providing for each character set a
conversion from and to UCS-4 encoded ISO 10646.  Using ISO 10646 as an
intermediate representation it is possible to "triangulate" (i.e.,
convert with an intermediate representation).

   There is no inherent requirement to provide a conversion to ISO 10646
for a new character set, and it is also possible to provide other
conversions where neither source nor destination character set is
ISO 10646.  The existing set of conversions is simply meant to cover all
conversions that might be of interest.

   All currently available conversions use the triangulation method
above, making conversion run unnecessarily slow.  If, for example,
somebody often needs the conversion from ISO-2022-JP to EUC-JP, a
quicker solution would involve direct conversion between the two
character sets, skipping the input to ISO 10646 first.  The two
character sets of interest are much more similar to each other than to
ISO 10646.

   In such a situation one easily can write a new conversion and provide
it as a better alternative.  The GNU C Library ‘iconv’ implementation
would automatically use the module implementing the conversion if it is
specified to be more efficient.

6.5.4.1 Format of ‘gconv-modules’ files
.......................................

All information about the available conversions comes from a file named
‘gconv-modules’, which can be found in any of the directories along the
‘GCONV_PATH’.  The ‘gconv-modules’ files are line-oriented text files,
where each of the lines has one of the following formats:

   • If the first non-whitespace character is a ‘#’ the line contains
     only comments and is ignored.

   • Lines starting with ‘alias’ define an alias name for a character
     set.  Two more words are expected on the line.  The first word
     defines the alias name, and the second defines the original name of
     the character set.  The effect is that it is possible to use the
     alias name in the FROMSET or TOSET parameters of ‘iconv_open’ and
     achieve the same result as when using the real character set name.

     This is quite important as a character set has often many different
     names.  There is normally an official name but this need not
     correspond to the most popular name.  Besides this many character
     sets have special names that are somehow constructed.  For example,
     all character sets specified by the ISO have an alias of the form
     ‘ISO-IR-NNN’ where NNN is the registration number.  This allows
     programs that know about the registration number to construct
     character set names and use them in ‘iconv_open’ calls.  More on
     the available names and aliases follows below.

   • Lines starting with ‘module’ introduce an available conversion
     module.  These lines must contain three or four more words.

     The first word specifies the source character set, the second word
     the destination character set of conversion implemented in this
     module, and the third word is the name of the loadable module.  The
     filename is constructed by appending the usual shared object suffix
     (normally ‘.so’) and this file is then supposed to be found in the
     same directory the ‘gconv-modules’ file is in.  The last word on
     the line, which is optional, is a numeric value representing the
     cost of the conversion.  If this word is missing, a cost of 1 is
     assumed.  The numeric value itself does not matter that much; what
     counts are the relative values of the sums of costs for all
     possible conversion paths.  Below is a more precise description of
     the use of the cost value.

   Returning to the example above where one has written a module to
directly convert from ISO-2022-JP to EUC-JP and back.  All that has to
be done is to put the new module, let its name be ISO2022JP-EUCJP.so, in
a directory and add a file ‘gconv-modules’ with the following content in
the same directory:

     module  ISO-2022-JP//   EUC-JP//        ISO2022JP-EUCJP    1
     module  EUC-JP//        ISO-2022-JP//   ISO2022JP-EUCJP    1

   To see why this is sufficient, it is necessary to understand how the
conversion used by ‘iconv’ (and described in the descriptor) is
selected.  The approach to this problem is quite simple.

   At the first call of the ‘iconv_open’ function the program reads all
available ‘gconv-modules’ files and builds up two tables: one containing
all the known aliases and another that contains the information about
the conversions and which shared object implements them.

6.5.4.2 Finding the conversion path in ‘iconv’
..............................................

The set of available conversions form a directed graph with weighted
edges.  The weights on the edges are the costs specified in the
‘gconv-modules’ files.  The ‘iconv_open’ function uses an algorithm
suitable for search for the best path in such a graph and so constructs
a list of conversions that must be performed in succession to get the
transformation from the source to the destination character set.

   Explaining why the above ‘gconv-modules’ files allows the ‘iconv’
implementation to resolve the specific ISO-2022-JP to EUC-JP conversion
module instead of the conversion coming with the library itself is
straightforward.  Since the latter conversion takes two steps (from
ISO-2022-JP to ISO 10646 and then from ISO 10646 to EUC-JP), the cost is
1+1 = 2.  The above ‘gconv-modules’ file, however, specifies that the
new conversion modules can perform this conversion with only the cost of
1.

   A mysterious item about the ‘gconv-modules’ file above (and also the
file coming with the GNU C Library) are the names of the character sets
specified in the ‘module’ lines.  Why do almost all the names end in
‘//’?  And this is not all: the names can actually be regular
expressions.  At this point in time this mystery should not be revealed,
unless you have the relevant spell-casting materials: ashes from an
original DOS 6.2 boot disk burnt in effigy, a crucifix blessed by St.
Emacs, assorted herbal roots from Central America, sand from Cebu, etc.
Sorry!  *The part of the implementation where this is used is not yet
finished.  For now please simply follow the existing examples.  It’ll
become clearer once it is.  –drepper*

   A last remark about the ‘gconv-modules’ is about the names not ending
with ‘//’.  A character set named ‘INTERNAL’ is often mentioned.  From
the discussion above and the chosen name it should have become clear
that this is the name for the representation used in the intermediate
step of the triangulation.  We have said that this is UCS-4 but actually
that is not quite right.  The UCS-4 specification also includes the
specification of the byte ordering used.  Since a UCS-4 value consists
of four bytes, a stored value is affected by byte ordering.  The
internal representation is _not_ the same as UCS-4 in case the byte
ordering of the processor (or at least the running process) is not the
same as the one required for UCS-4.  This is done for performance
reasons as one does not want to perform unnecessary byte-swapping
operations if one is not interested in actually seeing the result in
UCS-4.  To avoid trouble with endianness, the internal representation
consistently is named ‘INTERNAL’ even on big-endian systems where the
representations are identical.

6.5.4.3 ‘iconv’ module data structures
......................................

So far this section has described how modules are located and considered
to be used.  What remains to be described is the interface of the
modules so that one can write new ones.  This section describes the
interface as it is in use in January 1999.  The interface will change a
bit in the future but, with luck, only in an upwardly compatible way.

   The definitions necessary to write new modules are publicly available
in the non-standard header ‘gconv.h’.  The following text, therefore,
describes the definitions from this header file.  First, however, it is
necessary to get an overview.

   From the perspective of the user of ‘iconv’ the interface is quite
simple: the ‘iconv_open’ function returns a handle that can be used in
calls to ‘iconv’, and finally the handle is freed with a call to
‘iconv_close’.  The problem is that the handle has to be able to
represent the possibly long sequences of conversion steps and also the
state of each conversion since the handle is all that is passed to the
‘iconv’ function.  Therefore, the data structures are really the
elements necessary to understanding the implementation.

   We need two different kinds of data structures.  The first describes
the conversion and the second describes the state etc.  There are really
two type definitions like this in ‘gconv.h’.

 -- Data type: struct __gconv_step
     This data structure describes one conversion a module can perform.
     For each function in a loaded module with conversion functions
     there is exactly one object of this type.  This object is shared by
     all users of the conversion (i.e., this object does not contain any
     information corresponding to an actual conversion; it only
     describes the conversion itself).

     ‘struct __gconv_loaded_object *__shlib_handle’
     ‘const char *__modname’
     ‘int __counter’
          All these elements of the structure are used internally in the
          C library to coordinate loading and unloading the shared
          object.  One must not expect any of the other elements to be
          available or initialized.

     ‘const char *__from_name’
     ‘const char *__to_name’
          ‘__from_name’ and ‘__to_name’ contain the names of the source
          and destination character sets.  They can be used to identify
          the actual conversion to be carried out since one module might
          implement conversions for more than one character set and/or
          direction.

     ‘gconv_fct __fct’
     ‘gconv_init_fct __init_fct’
     ‘gconv_end_fct __end_fct’
          These elements contain pointers to the functions in the
          loadable module.  The interface will be explained below.

     ‘int __min_needed_from’
     ‘int __max_needed_from’
     ‘int __min_needed_to’
     ‘int __max_needed_to;’
          These values have to be supplied in the init function of the
          module.  The ‘__min_needed_from’ value specifies how many
          bytes a character of the source character set at least needs.
          The ‘__max_needed_from’ specifies the maximum value that also
          includes possible shift sequences.

          The ‘__min_needed_to’ and ‘__max_needed_to’ values serve the
          same purpose as ‘__min_needed_from’ and ‘__max_needed_from’
          but this time for the destination character set.

          It is crucial that these values be accurate since otherwise
          the conversion functions will have problems or not work at
          all.

     ‘int __stateful’
          This element must also be initialized by the init function.
          ‘int __stateful’ is nonzero if the source character set is
          stateful.  Otherwise it is zero.

     ‘void *__data’
          This element can be used freely by the conversion functions in
          the module.  ‘void *__data’ can be used to communicate extra
          information from one call to another.  ‘void *__data’ need not
          be initialized if not needed at all.  If ‘void *__data’
          element is assigned a pointer to dynamically allocated memory
          (presumably in the init function) it has to be made sure that
          the end function deallocates the memory.  Otherwise the
          application will leak memory.

          It is important to be aware that this data structure is shared
          by all users of this specification conversion and therefore
          the ‘__data’ element must not contain data specific to one
          specific use of the conversion function.

 -- Data type: struct __gconv_step_data
     This is the data structure that contains the information specific
     to each use of the conversion functions.

     ‘char *__outbuf’
     ‘char *__outbufend’
          These elements specify the output buffer for the conversion
          step.  The ‘__outbuf’ element points to the beginning of the
          buffer, and ‘__outbufend’ points to the byte following the
          last byte in the buffer.  The conversion function must not
          assume anything about the size of the buffer but it can be
          safely assumed there is room for at least one complete
          character in the output buffer.

          Once the conversion is finished, if the conversion is the last
          step, the ‘__outbuf’ element must be modified to point after
          the last byte written into the buffer to signal how much
          output is available.  If this conversion step is not the last
          one, the element must not be modified.  The ‘__outbufend’
          element must not be modified.

     ‘int __is_last’
          This element is nonzero if this conversion step is the last
          one.  This information is necessary for the recursion.  See
          the description of the conversion function internals below.
          This element must never be modified.

     ‘int __invocation_counter’
          The conversion function can use this element to see how many
          calls of the conversion function already happened.  Some
          character sets require a certain prolog when generating
          output, and by comparing this value with zero, one can find
          out whether it is the first call and whether, therefore, the
          prolog should be emitted.  This element must never be
          modified.

     ‘int __internal_use’
          This element is another one rarely used but needed in certain
          situations.  It is assigned a nonzero value in case the
          conversion functions are used to implement ‘mbsrtowcs’ et.al.
          (i.e., the function is not used directly through the ‘iconv’
          interface).

          This sometimes makes a difference as it is expected that the
          ‘iconv’ functions are used to translate entire texts while the
          ‘mbsrtowcs’ functions are normally used only to convert single
          strings and might be used multiple times to convert entire
          texts.

          But in this situation we would have problem complying with
          some rules of the character set specification.  Some character
          sets require a prolog, which must appear exactly once for an
          entire text.  If a number of ‘mbsrtowcs’ calls are used to
          convert the text, only the first call must add the prolog.
          However, because there is no communication between the
          different calls of ‘mbsrtowcs’, the conversion functions have
          no possibility to find this out.  The situation is different
          for sequences of ‘iconv’ calls since the handle allows access
          to the needed information.

          The ‘int __internal_use’ element is mostly used together with
          ‘__invocation_counter’ as follows:

               if (!data->__internal_use
                    && data->__invocation_counter == 0)
                 /* Emit prolog.  */
                 …

          This element must never be modified.

     ‘mbstate_t *__statep’
          The ‘__statep’ element points to an object of type ‘mbstate_t’
          (*note Keeping the state::).  The conversion of a stateful
          character set must use the object pointed to by ‘__statep’ to
          store information about the conversion state.  The ‘__statep’
          element itself must never be modified.

     ‘mbstate_t __state’
          This element must _never_ be used directly.  It is only part
          of this structure to have the needed space allocated.

6.5.4.4 ‘iconv’ module interfaces
.................................

With the knowledge about the data structures we now can describe the
conversion function itself.  To understand the interface a bit of
knowledge is necessary about the functionality in the C library that
loads the objects with the conversions.

   It is often the case that one conversion is used more than once
(i.e., there are several ‘iconv_open’ calls for the same set of
character sets during one program run).  The ‘mbsrtowcs’ et.al.
functions in the GNU C Library also use the ‘iconv’ functionality, which
increases the number of uses of the same functions even more.

   Because of this multiple use of conversions, the modules do not get
loaded exclusively for one conversion.  Instead a module once loaded can
be used by an arbitrary number of ‘iconv’ or ‘mbsrtowcs’ calls at the
same time.  The splitting of the information between conversion-
function-specific information and conversion data makes this possible.
The last section showed the two data structures used to do this.

   This is of course also reflected in the interface and semantics of
the functions that the modules must provide.  There are three functions
that must have the following names:

‘gconv_init’
     The ‘gconv_init’ function initializes the conversion function
     specific data structure.  This very same object is shared by all
     conversions that use this conversion and, therefore, no state
     information about the conversion itself must be stored in here.  If
     a module implements more than one conversion, the ‘gconv_init’
     function will be called multiple times.

‘gconv_end’
     The ‘gconv_end’ function is responsible for freeing all resources
     allocated by the ‘gconv_init’ function.  If there is nothing to do,
     this function can be missing.  Special care must be taken if the
     module implements more than one conversion and the ‘gconv_init’
     function does not allocate the same resources for all conversions.

‘gconv’
     This is the actual conversion function.  It is called to convert
     one block of text.  It gets passed the conversion step information
     initialized by ‘gconv_init’ and the conversion data, specific to
     this use of the conversion functions.

   There are three data types defined for the three module interface
functions and these define the interface.

 -- Data type: int (*__gconv_init_fct) (struct __gconv_step *)
     This specifies the interface of the initialization function of the
     module.  It is called exactly once for each conversion the module
     implements.

     As explained in the description of the ‘struct __gconv_step’ data
     structure above the initialization function has to initialize parts
     of it.

     ‘__min_needed_from’
     ‘__max_needed_from’
     ‘__min_needed_to’
     ‘__max_needed_to’
          These elements must be initialized to the exact numbers of the
          minimum and maximum number of bytes used by one character in
          the source and destination character sets, respectively.  If
          the characters all have the same size, the minimum and maximum
          values are the same.

     ‘__stateful’
          This element must be initialized to a nonzero value if the
          source character set is stateful.  Otherwise it must be zero.

     If the initialization function needs to communicate some
     information to the conversion function, this communication can
     happen using the ‘__data’ element of the ‘__gconv_step’ structure.
     But since this data is shared by all the conversions, it must not
     be modified by the conversion function.  The example below shows
     how this can be used.

          #define MIN_NEEDED_FROM         1
          #define MAX_NEEDED_FROM         4
          #define MIN_NEEDED_TO           4
          #define MAX_NEEDED_TO           4

          int
          gconv_init (struct __gconv_step *step)
          {
            /* Determine which direction.  */
            struct iso2022jp_data *new_data;
            enum direction dir = illegal_dir;
            enum variant var = illegal_var;
            int result;

            if (__strcasecmp (step->__from_name, "ISO-2022-JP//") == 0)
              {
                dir = from_iso2022jp;
                var = iso2022jp;
              }
            else if (__strcasecmp (step->__to_name, "ISO-2022-JP//") == 0)
              {
                dir = to_iso2022jp;
                var = iso2022jp;
              }
            else if (__strcasecmp (step->__from_name, "ISO-2022-JP-2//") == 0)
              {
                dir = from_iso2022jp;
                var = iso2022jp2;
              }
            else if (__strcasecmp (step->__to_name, "ISO-2022-JP-2//") == 0)
              {
                dir = to_iso2022jp;
                var = iso2022jp2;
              }

            result = __GCONV_NOCONV;
            if (dir != illegal_dir)
              {
                new_data = (struct iso2022jp_data *)
                  malloc (sizeof (struct iso2022jp_data));

                result = __GCONV_NOMEM;
                if (new_data != NULL)
                  {
                    new_data->dir = dir;
                    new_data->var = var;
                    step->__data = new_data;

                    if (dir == from_iso2022jp)
                      {
                        step->__min_needed_from = MIN_NEEDED_FROM;
                        step->__max_needed_from = MAX_NEEDED_FROM;
                        step->__min_needed_to = MIN_NEEDED_TO;
                        step->__max_needed_to = MAX_NEEDED_TO;
                      }
                    else
                      {
                        step->__min_needed_from = MIN_NEEDED_TO;
                        step->__max_needed_from = MAX_NEEDED_TO;
                        step->__min_needed_to = MIN_NEEDED_FROM;
                        step->__max_needed_to = MAX_NEEDED_FROM + 2;
                      }

                    /* Yes, this is a stateful encoding.  */
                    step->__stateful = 1;

                    result = __GCONV_OK;
                  }
              }

            return result;
          }

     The function first checks which conversion is wanted.  The module
     from which this function is taken implements four different
     conversions; which one is selected can be determined by comparing
     the names.  The comparison should always be done without paying
     attention to the case.

     Next, a data structure, which contains the necessary information
     about which conversion is selected, is allocated.  The data
     structure ‘struct iso2022jp_data’ is locally defined since, outside
     the module, this data is not used at all.  Please note that if all
     four conversions this module supports are requested there are four
     data blocks.

     One interesting thing is the initialization of the ‘__min_’ and
     ‘__max_’ elements of the step data object.  A single ISO-2022-JP
     character can consist of one to four bytes.  Therefore the
     ‘MIN_NEEDED_FROM’ and ‘MAX_NEEDED_FROM’ macros are defined this
     way.  The output is always the ‘INTERNAL’ character set (aka UCS-4)
     and therefore each character consists of exactly four bytes.  For
     the conversion from ‘INTERNAL’ to ISO-2022-JP we have to take into
     account that escape sequences might be necessary to switch the
     character sets.  Therefore the ‘__max_needed_to’ element for this
     direction gets assigned ‘MAX_NEEDED_FROM + 2’.  This takes into
     account the two bytes needed for the escape sequences to signal the
     switching.  The asymmetry in the maximum values for the two
     directions can be explained easily: when reading ISO-2022-JP text,
     escape sequences can be handled alone (i.e., it is not necessary to
     process a real character since the effect of the escape sequence
     can be recorded in the state information).  The situation is
     different for the other direction.  Since it is in general not
     known which character comes next, one cannot emit escape sequences
     to change the state in advance.  This means the escape sequences
     have to be emitted together with the next character.  Therefore one
     needs more room than only for the character itself.

     The possible return values of the initialization function are:

     ‘__GCONV_OK’
          The initialization succeeded
     ‘__GCONV_NOCONV’
          The requested conversion is not supported in the module.  This
          can happen if the ‘gconv-modules’ file has errors.
     ‘__GCONV_NOMEM’
          Memory required to store additional information could not be
          allocated.

   The function called before the module is unloaded is significantly
easier.  It often has nothing at all to do; in which case it can be left
out completely.

 -- Data type: void (*__gconv_end_fct) (struct gconv_step *)
     The task of this function is to free all resources allocated in the
     initialization function.  Therefore only the ‘__data’ element of
     the object pointed to by the argument is of interest.  Continuing
     the example from the initialization function, the finalization
     function looks like this:

          void
          gconv_end (struct __gconv_step *data)
          {
            free (data->__data);
          }

   The most important function is the conversion function itself, which
can get quite complicated for complex character sets.  But since this is
not of interest here, we will only describe a possible skeleton for the
conversion function.

 -- Data type: int (*__gconv_fct) (struct __gconv_step *, struct
          __gconv_step_data *, const char **, const char *, size_t *,
          int)
     The conversion function can be called for two basic reasons: to
     convert text or to reset the state.  From the description of the
     ‘iconv’ function it can be seen why the flushing mode is necessary.
     What mode is selected is determined by the sixth argument, an
     integer.  This argument being nonzero means that flushing is
     selected.

     Common to both modes is where the output buffer can be found.  The
     information about this buffer is stored in the conversion step
     data.  A pointer to this information is passed as the second
     argument to this function.  The description of the ‘struct
     __gconv_step_data’ structure has more information on the conversion
     step data.

     What has to be done for flushing depends on the source character
     set.  If the source character set is not stateful, nothing has to
     be done.  Otherwise the function has to emit a byte sequence to
     bring the state object into the initial state.  Once this all
     happened the other conversion modules in the chain of conversions
     have to get the same chance.  Whether another step follows can be
     determined from the ‘__is_last’ element of the step data structure
     to which the first parameter points.

     The more interesting mode is when actual text has to be converted.
     The first step in this case is to convert as much text as possible
     from the input buffer and store the result in the output buffer.
     The start of the input buffer is determined by the third argument,
     which is a pointer to a pointer variable referencing the beginning
     of the buffer.  The fourth argument is a pointer to the byte right
     after the last byte in the buffer.

     The conversion has to be performed according to the current state
     if the character set is stateful.  The state is stored in an object
     pointed to by the ‘__statep’ element of the step data (second
     argument).  Once either the input buffer is empty or the output
     buffer is full the conversion stops.  At this point, the pointer
     variable referenced by the third parameter must point to the byte
     following the last processed byte (i.e., if all of the input is
     consumed, this pointer and the fourth parameter have the same
     value).

     What now happens depends on whether this step is the last one.  If
     it is the last step, the only thing that has to be done is to
     update the ‘__outbuf’ element of the step data structure to point
     after the last written byte.  This update gives the caller the
     information on how much text is available in the output buffer.  In
     addition, the variable pointed to by the fifth parameter, which is
     of type ‘size_t’, must be incremented by the number of characters
     (_not bytes_) that were converted in a non-reversible way.  Then,
     the function can return.

     In case the step is not the last one, the later conversion
     functions have to get a chance to do their work.  Therefore, the
     appropriate conversion function has to be called.  The information
     about the functions is stored in the conversion data structures,
     passed as the first parameter.  This information and the step data
     are stored in arrays, so the next element in both cases can be
     found by simple pointer arithmetic:

          int
          gconv (struct __gconv_step *step, struct __gconv_step_data *data,
                 const char **inbuf, const char *inbufend, size_t *written,
                 int do_flush)
          {
            struct __gconv_step *next_step = step + 1;
            struct __gconv_step_data *next_data = data + 1;
            …

     The ‘next_step’ pointer references the next step information and
     ‘next_data’ the next data record.  The call of the next function
     therefore will look similar to this:

            next_step->__fct (next_step, next_data, &outerr, outbuf,
                              written, 0)

     But this is not yet all.  Once the function call returns the
     conversion function might have some more to do.  If the return
     value of the function is ‘__GCONV_EMPTY_INPUT’, more room is
     available in the output buffer.  Unless the input buffer is empty,
     the conversion functions start all over again and process the rest
     of the input buffer.  If the return value is not
     ‘__GCONV_EMPTY_INPUT’, something went wrong and we have to recover
     from this.

     A requirement for the conversion function is that the input buffer
     pointer (the third argument) always point to the last character
     that was put in converted form into the output buffer.  This is
     trivially true after the conversion performed in the current step,
     but if the conversion functions deeper downstream stop prematurely,
     not all characters from the output buffer are consumed and,
     therefore, the input buffer pointers must be backed off to the
     right position.

     Correcting the input buffers is easy to do if the input and output
     character sets have a fixed width for all characters.  In this
     situation we can compute how many characters are left in the output
     buffer and, therefore, can correct the input buffer pointer
     appropriately with a similar computation.  Things are getting
     tricky if either character set has characters represented with
     variable length byte sequences, and it gets even more complicated
     if the conversion has to take care of the state.  In these cases
     the conversion has to be performed once again, from the known state
     before the initial conversion (i.e., if necessary the state of the
     conversion has to be reset and the conversion loop has to be
     executed again).  The difference now is that it is known how much
     input must be created, and the conversion can stop before
     converting the first unused character.  Once this is done the input
     buffer pointers must be updated again and the function can return.

     One final thing should be mentioned.  If it is necessary for the
     conversion to know whether it is the first invocation (in case a
     prolog has to be emitted), the conversion function should increment
     the ‘__invocation_counter’ element of the step data structure just
     before returning to the caller.  See the description of the ‘struct
     __gconv_step_data’ structure above for more information on how this
     can be used.

     The return value must be one of the following values:

     ‘__GCONV_EMPTY_INPUT’
          All input was consumed and there is room left in the output
          buffer.
     ‘__GCONV_FULL_OUTPUT’
          No more room in the output buffer.  In case this is not the
          last step this value is propagated down from the call of the
          next conversion function in the chain.
     ‘__GCONV_INCOMPLETE_INPUT’
          The input buffer is not entirely empty since it contains an
          incomplete character sequence.

     The following example provides a framework for a conversion
     function.  In case a new conversion has to be written the holes in
     this implementation have to be filled and that is it.

          int
          gconv (struct __gconv_step *step, struct __gconv_step_data *data,
                 const char **inbuf, const char *inbufend, size_t *written,
                 int do_flush)
          {
            struct __gconv_step *next_step = step + 1;
            struct __gconv_step_data *next_data = data + 1;
            gconv_fct fct = next_step->__fct;
            int status;

            /* If the function is called with no input this means we have
               to reset to the initial state.  The possibly partly
               converted input is dropped.  */
            if (do_flush)
              {
                status = __GCONV_OK;

                /* Possible emit a byte sequence which put the state object
                   into the initial state.  */

                /* Call the steps down the chain if there are any but only
                   if we successfully emitted the escape sequence.  */
                if (status == __GCONV_OK && ! data->__is_last)
                  status = fct (next_step, next_data, NULL, NULL,
                                written, 1);
              }
            else
              {
                /* We preserve the initial values of the pointer variables.  */
                const char *inptr = *inbuf;
                char *outbuf = data->__outbuf;
                char *outend = data->__outbufend;
                char *outptr;

                do
                  {
                    /* Remember the start value for this round.  */
                    inptr = *inbuf;
                    /* The outbuf buffer is empty.  */
                    outptr = outbuf;

                    /* For stateful encodings the state must be safe here.  */

                    /* Run the conversion loop.  ‘status’ is set
                       appropriately afterwards.  */

                    /* If this is the last step, leave the loop.  There is
                       nothing we can do.  */
                    if (data->__is_last)
                      {
                        /* Store information about how many bytes are
                           available.  */
                        data->__outbuf = outbuf;

                       /* If any non-reversible conversions were performed,
                          add the number to ‘*written’.  */

                       break;
                     }

                    /* Write out all output that was produced.  */
                    if (outbuf > outptr)
                      {
                        const char *outerr = data->__outbuf;
                        int result;

                        result = fct (next_step, next_data, &outerr,
                                      outbuf, written, 0);

                        if (result != __GCONV_EMPTY_INPUT)
                          {
                            if (outerr != outbuf)
                              {
                                /* Reset the input buffer pointer.  We
                                   document here the complex case.  */
                                size_t nstatus;

                                /* Reload the pointers.  */
                                *inbuf = inptr;
                                outbuf = outptr;

                                /* Possibly reset the state.  */

                                /* Redo the conversion, but this time
                                   the end of the output buffer is at
                                   ‘outerr’.  */
                              }

                            /* Change the status.  */
                            status = result;
                          }
                        else
                          /* All the output is consumed, we can make
                              another run if everything was ok.  */
                          if (status == __GCONV_FULL_OUTPUT)
                            status = __GCONV_OK;
                     }
                  }
                while (status == __GCONV_OK);

                /* We finished one use of this step.  */
                ++data->__invocation_counter;
              }

            return status;
          }

   This information should be sufficient to write new modules.  Anybody
doing so should also take a look at the available source code in the GNU
C Library sources.  It contains many examples of working and optimized
modules.


File: libc.info,  Node: Locales,  Next: Message Translation,  Prev: Character Set Handling,  Up: Top

7 Locales and Internationalization
**********************************

Different countries and cultures have varying conventions for how to
communicate.  These conventions range from very simple ones, such as the
format for representing dates and times, to very complex ones, such as
the language spoken.

   "Internationalization" of software means programming it to be able to
adapt to the user’s favorite conventions.  In ISO C,
internationalization works by means of "locales".  Each locale specifies
a collection of conventions, one convention for each purpose.  The user
chooses a set of conventions by specifying a locale (via environment
variables).

   All programs inherit the chosen locale as part of their environment.
Provided the programs are written to obey the choice of locale, they
will follow the conventions preferred by the user.

* Menu:

* Effects of Locale::           Actions affected by the choice of
                                 locale.
* Choosing Locale::             How the user specifies a locale.
* Locale Categories::           Different purposes for which you can
                                 select a locale.
* Setting the Locale::          How a program specifies the locale
                                 with library functions.
* Standard Locales::            Locale names available on all systems.
* Locale Names::                Format of system-specific locale names.
* Locale Information::          How to access the information for the locale.
* Formatting Numbers::          A dedicated function to format numbers.
* Yes-or-No Questions::         Check a Response against the locale.


File: libc.info,  Node: Effects of Locale,  Next: Choosing Locale,  Up: Locales

7.1 What Effects a Locale Has
=============================

Each locale specifies conventions for several purposes, including the
following:

   • What multibyte character sequences are valid, and how they are
     interpreted (*note Character Set Handling::).

   • Classification of which characters in the local character set are
     considered alphabetic, and upper- and lower-case conversion
     conventions (*note Character Handling::).

   • The collating sequence for the local language and character set
     (*note Collation Functions::).

   • Formatting of numbers and currency amounts (*note General
     Numeric::).

   • Formatting of dates and times (*note Formatting Calendar Time::).

   • What language to use for output, including error messages (*note
     Message Translation::).

   • What language to use for user answers to yes-or-no questions (*note
     Yes-or-No Questions::).

   • What language to use for more complex user input.  (The C library
     doesn’t yet help you implement this.)

   Some aspects of adapting to the specified locale are handled
automatically by the library subroutines.  For example, all your program
needs to do in order to use the collating sequence of the chosen locale
is to use ‘strcoll’ or ‘strxfrm’ to compare strings.

   Other aspects of locales are beyond the comprehension of the library.
For example, the library can’t automatically translate your program’s
output messages into other languages.  The only way you can support
output in the user’s favorite language is to program this more or less
by hand.  The C library provides functions to handle translations for
multiple languages easily.

   This chapter discusses the mechanism by which you can modify the
current locale.  The effects of the current locale on specific library
functions are discussed in more detail in the descriptions of those
functions.


File: libc.info,  Node: Choosing Locale,  Next: Locale Categories,  Prev: Effects of Locale,  Up: Locales

7.2 Choosing a Locale
=====================

The simplest way for the user to choose a locale is to set the
environment variable ‘LANG’.  This specifies a single locale to use for
all purposes.  For example, a user could specify a hypothetical locale
named ‘espana-castellano’ to use the standard conventions of most of
Spain.

   The set of locales supported depends on the operating system you are
using, and so do their names, except that the standard locale called ‘C’
or ‘POSIX’ always exist.  *Note Locale Names::.

   In order to force the system to always use the default locale, the
user can set the ‘LC_ALL’ environment variable to ‘C’.

   A user also has the option of specifying different locales for
different purposes—in effect, choosing a mixture of multiple locales.
*Note Locale Categories::.

   For example, the user might specify the locale ‘espana-castellano’
for most purposes, but specify the locale ‘usa-english’ for currency
formatting.  This might make sense if the user is a Spanish-speaking
American, working in Spanish, but representing monetary amounts in US
dollars.

   Note that both locales ‘espana-castellano’ and ‘usa-english’, like
all locales, would include conventions for all of the purposes to which
locales apply.  However, the user can choose to use each locale for a
particular subset of those purposes.


File: libc.info,  Node: Locale Categories,  Next: Setting the Locale,  Prev: Choosing Locale,  Up: Locales

7.3 Locale Categories
=====================

The purposes that locales serve are grouped into "categories", so that a
user or a program can choose the locale for each category independently.
Here is a table of categories; each name is both an environment variable
that a user can set, and a macro name that you can use as the first
argument to ‘setlocale’.

   The contents of the environment variable (or the string in the second
argument to ‘setlocale’) has to be a valid locale name.  *Note Locale
Names::.

‘LC_COLLATE’
     This category applies to collation of strings (functions ‘strcoll’
     and ‘strxfrm’); see *note Collation Functions::.

‘LC_CTYPE’
     This category applies to classification and conversion of
     characters, and to multibyte and wide characters; see *note
     Character Handling::, and *note Character Set Handling::.

‘LC_MONETARY’
     This category applies to formatting monetary values; see *note
     General Numeric::.

‘LC_NUMERIC’
     This category applies to formatting numeric values that are not
     monetary; see *note General Numeric::.

‘LC_TIME’
     This category applies to formatting date and time values; see *note
     Formatting Calendar Time::.

‘LC_MESSAGES’
     This category applies to selecting the language used in the user
     interface for message translation (*note The Uniforum approach::;
     *note Message catalogs a la X/Open::) and contains regular
     expressions for affirmative and negative responses.

‘LC_ALL’
     This is not a category; it is only a macro that you can use with
     ‘setlocale’ to set a single locale for all purposes.  Setting this
     environment variable overwrites all selections by the other ‘LC_*’
     variables or ‘LANG’.

‘LANG’
     If this environment variable is defined, its value specifies the
     locale to use for all purposes except as overridden by the
     variables above.

   When developing the message translation functions it was felt that
the functionality provided by the variables above is not sufficient.
For example, it should be possible to specify more than one locale name.
Take a Swedish user who better speaks German than English, and a program
whose messages are output in English by default.  It should be possible
to specify that the first choice of language is Swedish, the second
German, and if this also fails to use English.  This is possible with
the variable ‘LANGUAGE’.  For further description of this GNU extension
see *note Using gettextized software::.


File: libc.info,  Node: Setting the Locale,  Next: Standard Locales,  Prev: Locale Categories,  Up: Locales

7.4 How Programs Set the Locale
===============================

A C program inherits its locale environment variables when it starts up.
This happens automatically.  However, these variables do not
automatically control the locale used by the library functions, because ISO C
says that all programs start by default in the standard ‘C’ locale.  To
use the locales specified by the environment, you must call ‘setlocale’.
Call it as follows:

     setlocale (LC_ALL, "");

to select a locale based on the user choice of the appropriate
environment variables.

   You can also use ‘setlocale’ to specify a particular locale, for
general use or for a specific category.

   The symbols in this section are defined in the header file
‘locale.h’.

 -- Function: char * setlocale (int CATEGORY, const char *LOCALE)
     Preliminary: | MT-Unsafe const:locale env | AS-Unsafe init lock
     heap corrupt | AC-Unsafe init corrupt lock mem fd | *Note POSIX
     Safety Concepts::.

     The function ‘setlocale’ sets the current locale for category
     CATEGORY to LOCALE.

     If CATEGORY is ‘LC_ALL’, this specifies the locale for all
     purposes.  The other possible values of CATEGORY specify a single
     purpose (*note Locale Categories::).

     You can also use this function to find out the current locale by
     passing a null pointer as the LOCALE argument.  In this case,
     ‘setlocale’ returns a string that is the name of the locale
     currently selected for category CATEGORY.

     The string returned by ‘setlocale’ can be overwritten by subsequent
     calls, so you should make a copy of the string (*note Copying
     Strings and Arrays::) if you want to save it past any further calls
     to ‘setlocale’.  (The standard library is guaranteed never to call
     ‘setlocale’ itself.)

     You should not modify the string returned by ‘setlocale’.  It might
     be the same string that was passed as an argument in a previous
     call to ‘setlocale’.  One requirement is that the CATEGORY must be
     the same in the call the string was returned and the one when the
     string is passed in as LOCALE parameter.

     When you read the current locale for category ‘LC_ALL’, the value
     encodes the entire combination of selected locales for all
     categories.  If you specify the same “locale name” with ‘LC_ALL’ in
     a subsequent call to ‘setlocale’, it restores the same combination
     of locale selections.

     To be sure you can use the returned string encoding the currently
     selected locale at a later time, you must make a copy of the
     string.  It is not guaranteed that the returned pointer remains
     valid over time.

     When the LOCALE argument is not a null pointer, the string returned
     by ‘setlocale’ reflects the newly-modified locale.

     If you specify an empty string for LOCALE, this means to read the
     appropriate environment variable and use its value to select the
     locale for CATEGORY.

     If a nonempty string is given for LOCALE, then the locale of that
     name is used if possible.

     The effective locale name (either the second argument to
     ‘setlocale’, or if the argument is an empty string, the name
     obtained from the process environment) must be a valid locale name.
     *Note Locale Names::.

     If you specify an invalid locale name, ‘setlocale’ returns a null
     pointer and leaves the current locale unchanged.

   Here is an example showing how you might use ‘setlocale’ to
temporarily switch to a new locale.

     #include <stddef.h>
     #include <locale.h>
     #include <stdlib.h>
     #include <string.h>

     void
     with_other_locale (char *new_locale,
                        void (*subroutine) (int),
                        int argument)
     {
       char *old_locale, *saved_locale;

       /* Get the name of the current locale.  */
       old_locale = setlocale (LC_ALL, NULL);

       /* Copy the name so it won’t be clobbered by ‘setlocale’. */
       saved_locale = strdup (old_locale);
       if (saved_locale == NULL)
         fatal ("Out of memory");

       /* Now change the locale and do some stuff with it. */
       setlocale (LC_ALL, new_locale);
       (*subroutine) (argument);

       /* Restore the original locale. */
       setlocale (LC_ALL, saved_locale);
       free (saved_locale);
     }

   *Portability Note:* Some ISO C systems may define additional locale
categories, and future versions of the library will do so.  For
portability, assume that any symbol beginning with ‘LC_’ might be
defined in ‘locale.h’.


File: libc.info,  Node: Standard Locales,  Next: Locale Names,  Prev: Setting the Locale,  Up: Locales

7.5 Standard Locales
====================

The only locale names you can count on finding on all operating systems
are these three standard ones:

‘"C"’
     This is the standard C locale.  The attributes and behavior it
     provides are specified in the ISO C standard.  When your program
     starts up, it initially uses this locale by default.

‘"POSIX"’
     This is the standard POSIX locale.  Currently, it is an alias for
     the standard C locale.

‘""’
     The empty name says to select a locale based on environment
     variables.  *Note Locale Categories::.

   Defining and installing named locales is normally a responsibility of
the system administrator at your site (or the person who installed the
GNU C Library).  It is also possible for the user to create private
locales.  All this will be discussed later when describing the tool to
do so.

   If your program needs to use something other than the ‘C’ locale, it
will be more portable if you use whatever locale the user specifies with
the environment, rather than trying to specify some non-standard locale
explicitly by name.  Remember, different machines might have different
sets of locales installed.


File: libc.info,  Node: Locale Names,  Next: Locale Information,  Prev: Standard Locales,  Up: Locales

7.6 Locale Names
================

The following command prints a list of locales supported by the system:

       locale -a

   *Portability Note:* With the notable exception of the standard locale
names ‘C’ and ‘POSIX’, locale names are system-specific.

   Most locale names follow XPG syntax and consist of up to four parts:

     LANGUAGE[_TERRITORY[.CODESET]][@MODIFIER]

   Beside the first part, all of them are allowed to be missing.  If the
full specified locale is not found, less specific ones are looked for.
The various parts will be stripped off, in the following order:

  1. codeset
  2. normalized codeset
  3. territory
  4. modifier

   For example, the locale name ‘de_AT.iso885915@euro’ denotes a
German-language locale for use in Austria, using the ISO-8859-15
(Latin-9) character set, and with the Euro as the currency symbol.

   In addition to locale names which follow XPG syntax, systems may
provide aliases such as ‘german’.  Both categories of names must not
contain the slash character ‘/’.

   If the locale name starts with a slash ‘/’, it is treated as a path
relative to the configured locale directories; see ‘LOCPATH’ below.  The
specified path must not contain a component ‘..’, or the name is
invalid, and ‘setlocale’ will fail.

   *Portability Note:* POSIX suggests that if a locale name starts with
a slash ‘/’, it is resolved as an absolute path.  However, the GNU C
Library treats it as a relative path under the directories listed in
‘LOCPATH’ (or the default locale directory if ‘LOCPATH’ is unset).

   Locale names which are longer than an implementation-defined limit
are invalid and cause ‘setlocale’ to fail.

   As a special case, locale names used with ‘LC_ALL’ can combine
several locales, reflecting different locale settings for different
categories.  For example, you might want to use a U.S. locale with ISO
A4 paper format, so you set ‘LANG’ to ‘en_US.UTF-8’, and ‘LC_PAPER’ to
‘de_DE.UTF-8’.  In this case, the ‘LC_ALL’-style combined locale name is

     LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8;LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8;LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8;…

   followed by other category settings not shown here.

   The path used for finding locale data can be set using the ‘LOCPATH’
environment variable.  This variable lists the directories in which to
search for locale definitions, separated by a colon ‘:’.

   The default path for finding locale data is system specific.  A
typical value for the ‘LOCPATH’ default is:

     /usr/share/locale

   The value of ‘LOCPATH’ is ignored by privileged programs for security
reasons, and only the default directory is used.


File: libc.info,  Node: Locale Information,  Next: Formatting Numbers,  Prev: Locale Names,  Up: Locales

7.7 Accessing Locale Information
================================

There are several ways to access locale information.  The simplest way
is to let the C library itself do the work.  Several of the functions in
this library implicitly access the locale data, and use what information
is provided by the currently selected locale.  This is how the locale
model is meant to work normally.

   As an example take the ‘strftime’ function, which is meant to nicely
format date and time information (*note Formatting Calendar Time::).
Part of the standard information contained in the ‘LC_TIME’ category is
the names of the months.  Instead of requiring the programmer to take
care of providing the translations the ‘strftime’ function does this all
by itself.  ‘%A’ in the format string is replaced by the appropriate
weekday name of the locale currently selected by ‘LC_TIME’.  This is an
easy example, and wherever possible functions do things automatically in
this way.

   But there are quite often situations when there is simply no function
to perform the task, or it is simply not possible to do the work
automatically.  For these cases it is necessary to access the
information in the locale directly.  To do this the C library provides
two functions: ‘localeconv’ and ‘nl_langinfo’.  The former is part of ISO C
and therefore portable, but has a brain-damaged interface.  The second
is part of the Unix interface and is portable in as far as the system
follows the Unix standards.

* Menu:

* The Lame Way to Locale Data::   ISO C’s ‘localeconv’.
* The Elegant and Fast Way::      X/Open’s ‘nl_langinfo’.


File: libc.info,  Node: The Lame Way to Locale Data,  Next: The Elegant and Fast Way,  Up: Locale Information

7.7.1 ‘localeconv’: It is portable but …
----------------------------------------

Together with the ‘setlocale’ function the ISO C people invented the
‘localeconv’ function.  It is a masterpiece of poor design.  It is
expensive to use, not extensible, and not generally usable as it
provides access to only ‘LC_MONETARY’ and ‘LC_NUMERIC’ related
information.  Nevertheless, if it is applicable to a given situation it
should be used since it is very portable.  The function ‘strfmon’
formats monetary amounts according to the selected locale using this
information.

 -- Function: struct lconv * localeconv (void)
     Preliminary: | MT-Unsafe race:localeconv locale | AS-Unsafe |
     AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘localeconv’ function returns a pointer to a structure whose
     components contain information about how numeric and monetary
     values should be formatted in the current locale.

     You should not modify the structure or its contents.  The structure
     might be overwritten by subsequent calls to ‘localeconv’, or by
     calls to ‘setlocale’, but no other function in the library
     overwrites this value.

 -- Data Type: struct lconv
     ‘localeconv’’s return value is of this data type.  Its elements are
     described in the following subsections.

   If a member of the structure ‘struct lconv’ has type ‘char’, and the
value is ‘CHAR_MAX’, it means that the current locale has no value for
that parameter.

* Menu:

* General Numeric::             Parameters for formatting numbers and
                                 currency amounts.
* Currency Symbol::             How to print the symbol that identifies an
                                 amount of money (e.g. ‘$’).
* Sign of Money Amount::        How to print the (positive or negative) sign
                                 for a monetary amount, if one exists.


File: libc.info,  Node: General Numeric,  Next: Currency Symbol,  Up: The Lame Way to Locale Data

7.7.1.1 Generic Numeric Formatting Parameters
.............................................

These are the standard members of ‘struct lconv’; there may be others.

‘char *decimal_point’
‘char *mon_decimal_point’
     These are the decimal-point separators used in formatting
     non-monetary and monetary quantities, respectively.  In the ‘C’
     locale, the value of ‘decimal_point’ is ‘"."’, and the value of
     ‘mon_decimal_point’ is ‘""’.

‘char *thousands_sep’
‘char *mon_thousands_sep’
     These are the separators used to delimit groups of digits to the
     left of the decimal point in formatting non-monetary and monetary
     quantities, respectively.  In the ‘C’ locale, both members have a
     value of ‘""’ (the empty string).

‘char *grouping’
‘char *mon_grouping’
     These are strings that specify how to group the digits to the left
     of the decimal point.  ‘grouping’ applies to non-monetary
     quantities and ‘mon_grouping’ applies to monetary quantities.  Use
     either ‘thousands_sep’ or ‘mon_thousands_sep’ to separate the digit
     groups.

     Each member of these strings is to be interpreted as an integer
     value of type ‘char’.  Successive numbers (from left to right) give
     the sizes of successive groups (from right to left, starting at the
     decimal point.)  The last member is either ‘0’, in which case the
     previous member is used over and over again for all the remaining
     groups, or ‘CHAR_MAX’, in which case there is no more grouping—or,
     put another way, any remaining digits form one large group without
     separators.

     For example, if ‘grouping’ is ‘"\04\03\02"’, the correct grouping
     for the number ‘123456787654321’ is ‘12’, ‘34’, ‘56’, ‘78’, ‘765’,
     ‘4321’.  This uses a group of 4 digits at the end, preceded by a
     group of 3 digits, preceded by groups of 2 digits (as many as
     needed).  With a separator of ‘,’, the number would be printed as
     ‘12,34,56,78,765,4321’.

     A value of ‘"\03"’ indicates repeated groups of three digits, as
     normally used in the U.S.

     In the standard ‘C’ locale, both ‘grouping’ and ‘mon_grouping’ have
     a value of ‘""’.  This value specifies no grouping at all.

‘char int_frac_digits’
‘char frac_digits’
     These are small integers indicating how many fractional digits (to
     the right of the decimal point) should be displayed in a monetary
     value in international and local formats, respectively.  (Most
     often, both members have the same value.)

     In the standard ‘C’ locale, both of these members have the value
     ‘CHAR_MAX’, meaning “unspecified”.  The ISO standard doesn’t say
     what to do when you find this value; we recommend printing no
     fractional digits.  (This locale also specifies the empty string
     for ‘mon_decimal_point’, so printing any fractional digits would be
     confusing!)


File: libc.info,  Node: Currency Symbol,  Next: Sign of Money Amount,  Prev: General Numeric,  Up: The Lame Way to Locale Data

7.7.1.2 Printing the Currency Symbol
....................................

These members of the ‘struct lconv’ structure specify how to print the
symbol to identify a monetary value—the international analog of ‘$’ for
US dollars.

   Each country has two standard currency symbols.  The "local currency
symbol" is used commonly within the country, while the "international
currency symbol" is used internationally to refer to that country’s
currency when it is necessary to indicate the country unambiguously.

   For example, many countries use the dollar as their monetary unit,
and when dealing with international currencies it’s important to specify
that one is dealing with (say) Canadian dollars instead of U.S. dollars
or Australian dollars.  But when the context is known to be Canada,
there is no need to make this explicit—dollar amounts are implicitly
assumed to be in Canadian dollars.

‘char *currency_symbol’
     The local currency symbol for the selected locale.

     In the standard ‘C’ locale, this member has a value of ‘""’ (the
     empty string), meaning “unspecified”.  The ISO standard doesn’t say
     what to do when you find this value; we recommend you simply print
     the empty string as you would print any other string pointed to by
     this variable.

‘char *int_curr_symbol’
     The international currency symbol for the selected locale.

     The value of ‘int_curr_symbol’ should normally consist of a
     three-letter abbreviation determined by the international standard
     ‘ISO 4217 Codes for the Representation of Currency and Funds’,
     followed by a one-character separator (often a space).

     In the standard ‘C’ locale, this member has a value of ‘""’ (the
     empty string), meaning “unspecified”.  We recommend you simply
     print the empty string as you would print any other string pointed
     to by this variable.

‘char p_cs_precedes’
‘char n_cs_precedes’
‘char int_p_cs_precedes’
‘char int_n_cs_precedes’
     These members are ‘1’ if the ‘currency_symbol’ or ‘int_curr_symbol’
     strings should precede the value of a monetary amount, or ‘0’ if
     the strings should follow the value.  The ‘p_cs_precedes’ and
     ‘int_p_cs_precedes’ members apply to positive amounts (or zero),
     and the ‘n_cs_precedes’ and ‘int_n_cs_precedes’ members apply to
     negative amounts.

     In the standard ‘C’ locale, all of these members have a value of
     ‘CHAR_MAX’, meaning “unspecified”.  The ISO standard doesn’t say
     what to do when you find this value.  We recommend printing the
     currency symbol before the amount, which is right for most
     countries.  In other words, treat all nonzero values alike in these
     members.

     The members with the ‘int_’ prefix apply to the ‘int_curr_symbol’
     while the other two apply to ‘currency_symbol’.

‘char p_sep_by_space’
‘char n_sep_by_space’
‘char int_p_sep_by_space’
‘char int_n_sep_by_space’
     These members are ‘1’ if a space should appear between the
     ‘currency_symbol’ or ‘int_curr_symbol’ strings and the amount, or
     ‘0’ if no space should appear.  The ‘p_sep_by_space’ and
     ‘int_p_sep_by_space’ members apply to positive amounts (or zero),
     and the ‘n_sep_by_space’ and ‘int_n_sep_by_space’ members apply to
     negative amounts.

     In the standard ‘C’ locale, all of these members have a value of
     ‘CHAR_MAX’, meaning “unspecified”.  The ISO standard doesn’t say
     what you should do when you find this value; we suggest you treat
     it as 1 (print a space).  In other words, treat all nonzero values
     alike in these members.

     The members with the ‘int_’ prefix apply to the ‘int_curr_symbol’
     while the other two apply to ‘currency_symbol’.  There is one
     specialty with the ‘int_curr_symbol’, though.  Since all legal
     values contain a space at the end of the string one either prints
     this space (if the currency symbol must appear in front and must be
     separated) or one has to avoid printing this character at all
     (especially when at the end of the string).


File: libc.info,  Node: Sign of Money Amount,  Prev: Currency Symbol,  Up: The Lame Way to Locale Data

7.7.1.3 Printing the Sign of a Monetary Amount
..............................................

These members of the ‘struct lconv’ structure specify how to print the
sign (if any) of a monetary value.

‘char *positive_sign’
‘char *negative_sign’
     These are strings used to indicate positive (or zero) and negative
     monetary quantities, respectively.

     In the standard ‘C’ locale, both of these members have a value of
     ‘""’ (the empty string), meaning “unspecified”.

     The ISO standard doesn’t say what to do when you find this value;
     we recommend printing ‘positive_sign’ as you find it, even if it is
     empty.  For a negative value, print ‘negative_sign’ as you find it
     unless both it and ‘positive_sign’ are empty, in which case print
     ‘-’ instead.  (Failing to indicate the sign at all seems rather
     unreasonable.)

‘char p_sign_posn’
‘char n_sign_posn’
‘char int_p_sign_posn’
‘char int_n_sign_posn’
     These members are small integers that indicate how to position the
     sign for nonnegative and negative monetary quantities,
     respectively.  (The string used for the sign is what was specified
     with ‘positive_sign’ or ‘negative_sign’.)  The possible values are
     as follows:

     ‘0’
          The currency symbol and quantity should be surrounded by
          parentheses.

     ‘1’
          Print the sign string before the quantity and currency symbol.

     ‘2’
          Print the sign string after the quantity and currency symbol.

     ‘3’
          Print the sign string right before the currency symbol.

     ‘4’
          Print the sign string right after the currency symbol.

     ‘CHAR_MAX’
          “Unspecified”.  Both members have this value in the standard
          ‘C’ locale.

     The ISO standard doesn’t say what you should do when the value is
     ‘CHAR_MAX’.  We recommend you print the sign after the currency
     symbol.

     The members with the ‘int_’ prefix apply to the ‘int_curr_symbol’
     while the other two apply to ‘currency_symbol’.


File: libc.info,  Node: The Elegant and Fast Way,  Prev: The Lame Way to Locale Data,  Up: Locale Information

7.7.2 Pinpoint Access to Locale Data
------------------------------------

When writing the X/Open Portability Guide the authors realized that the
‘localeconv’ function is not enough to provide reasonable access to
locale information.  The information which was meant to be available in
the locale (as later specified in the POSIX.1 standard) requires more
ways to access it.  Therefore the ‘nl_langinfo’ function was introduced.

 -- Function: char * nl_langinfo (nl_item ITEM)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe locale | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX
     Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘nl_langinfo’ function can be used to access individual
     elements of the locale categories.  Unlike the ‘localeconv’
     function, which returns all the information, ‘nl_langinfo’ lets the
     caller select what information it requires.  This is very fast and
     it is not a problem to call this function multiple times.

     A second advantage is that in addition to the numeric and monetary
     formatting information, information from the ‘LC_TIME’ and
     ‘LC_MESSAGES’ categories is available.

     The type ‘nl_type’ is defined in ‘nl_types.h’.  The argument ITEM
     is a numeric value defined in the header ‘langinfo.h’.  The X/Open
     standard defines the following values:

     ‘CODESET’
          ‘nl_langinfo’ returns a string with the name of the coded
          character set used in the selected locale.

     ‘ABDAY_1’
     ‘ABDAY_2’
     ‘ABDAY_3’
     ‘ABDAY_4’
     ‘ABDAY_5’
     ‘ABDAY_6’
     ‘ABDAY_7’
          ‘nl_langinfo’ returns the abbreviated weekday name.  ‘ABDAY_1’
          corresponds to Sunday.
     ‘DAY_1’
     ‘DAY_2’
     ‘DAY_3’
     ‘DAY_4’
     ‘DAY_5’
     ‘DAY_6’
     ‘DAY_7’
          Similar to ‘ABDAY_1’ etc., but here the return value is the
          unabbreviated weekday name.
     ‘ABMON_1’
     ‘ABMON_2’
     ‘ABMON_3’
     ‘ABMON_4’
     ‘ABMON_5’
     ‘ABMON_6’
     ‘ABMON_7’
     ‘ABMON_8’
     ‘ABMON_9’
     ‘ABMON_10’
     ‘ABMON_11’
     ‘ABMON_12’
          The return value is abbreviated name of the month.  ‘ABMON_1’
          corresponds to January.
     ‘MON_1’
     ‘MON_2’
     ‘MON_3’
     ‘MON_4’
     ‘MON_5’
     ‘MON_6’
     ‘MON_7’
     ‘MON_8’
     ‘MON_9’
     ‘MON_10’
     ‘MON_11’
     ‘MON_12’
          Similar to ‘ABMON_1’ etc., but here the month names are not
          abbreviated.  Here the first value ‘MON_1’ also corresponds to
          January.
     ‘AM_STR’
     ‘PM_STR’
          The return values are strings which can be used in the
          representation of time as an hour from 1 to 12 plus an am/pm
          specifier.

          Note that in locales which do not use this time representation
          these strings might be empty, in which case the am/pm format
          cannot be used at all.
     ‘D_T_FMT’
          The return value can be used as a format string for ‘strftime’
          to represent time and date in a locale-specific way.
     ‘D_FMT’
          The return value can be used as a format string for ‘strftime’
          to represent a date in a locale-specific way.
     ‘T_FMT’
          The return value can be used as a format string for ‘strftime’
          to represent time in a locale-specific way.
     ‘T_FMT_AMPM’
          The return value can be used as a format string for ‘strftime’
          to represent time in the am/pm format.

          Note that if the am/pm format does not make any sense for the
          selected locale, the return value might be the same as the one
          for ‘T_FMT’.
     ‘ERA’
          The return value represents the era used in the current
          locale.

          Most locales do not define this value.  An example of a locale
          which does define this value is the Japanese one.  In Japan,
          the traditional representation of dates includes the name of
          the era corresponding to the then-emperor’s reign.

          Normally it should not be necessary to use this value
          directly.  Specifying the ‘E’ modifier in their format strings
          causes the ‘strftime’ functions to use this information.  The
          format of the returned string is not specified, and therefore
          you should not assume knowledge of it on different systems.
     ‘ERA_YEAR’
          The return value gives the year in the relevant era of the
          locale.  As for ‘ERA’ it should not be necessary to use this
          value directly.
     ‘ERA_D_T_FMT’
          This return value can be used as a format string for
          ‘strftime’ to represent dates and times in a locale-specific
          era-based way.
     ‘ERA_D_FMT’
          This return value can be used as a format string for
          ‘strftime’ to represent a date in a locale-specific era-based
          way.
     ‘ERA_T_FMT’
          This return value can be used as a format string for
          ‘strftime’ to represent time in a locale-specific era-based
          way.
     ‘ALT_DIGITS’
          The return value is a representation of up to 100 values used
          to represent the values 0 to 99.  As for ‘ERA’ this value is
          not intended to be used directly, but instead indirectly
          through the ‘strftime’ function.  When the modifier ‘O’ is
          used in a format which would otherwise use numerals to
          represent hours, minutes, seconds, weekdays, months, or weeks,
          the appropriate value for the locale is used instead.
     ‘INT_CURR_SYMBOL’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘int_curr_symbol’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘CURRENCY_SYMBOL’
     ‘CRNCYSTR’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘currency_symbol’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.

          ‘CRNCYSTR’ is a deprecated alias still required by Unix98.
     ‘MON_DECIMAL_POINT’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘mon_decimal_point’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘MON_THOUSANDS_SEP’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘mon_thousands_sep’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘MON_GROUPING’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘mon_grouping’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘POSITIVE_SIGN’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘positive_sign’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘NEGATIVE_SIGN’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘negative_sign’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘INT_FRAC_DIGITS’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘int_frac_digits’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘FRAC_DIGITS’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘frac_digits’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘P_CS_PRECEDES’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘p_cs_precedes’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘P_SEP_BY_SPACE’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘p_sep_by_space’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘N_CS_PRECEDES’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘n_cs_precedes’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘N_SEP_BY_SPACE’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘n_sep_by_space’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘P_SIGN_POSN’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘p_sign_posn’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘N_SIGN_POSN’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘n_sign_posn’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.

     ‘INT_P_CS_PRECEDES’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘int_p_cs_precedes’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘INT_P_SEP_BY_SPACE’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘int_p_sep_by_space’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘INT_N_CS_PRECEDES’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘int_n_cs_precedes’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘INT_N_SEP_BY_SPACE’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘int_n_sep_by_space’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘INT_P_SIGN_POSN’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘int_p_sign_posn’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘INT_N_SIGN_POSN’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘int_n_sign_posn’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.

     ‘DECIMAL_POINT’
     ‘RADIXCHAR’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘decimal_point’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.

          The name ‘RADIXCHAR’ is a deprecated alias still used in
          Unix98.
     ‘THOUSANDS_SEP’
     ‘THOUSEP’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘thousands_sep’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.

          The name ‘THOUSEP’ is a deprecated alias still used in Unix98.
     ‘GROUPING’
          The same as the value returned by ‘localeconv’ in the
          ‘grouping’ element of the ‘struct lconv’.
     ‘YESEXPR’
          The return value is a regular expression which can be used
          with the ‘regex’ function to recognize a positive response to
          a yes/no question.  The GNU C Library provides the ‘rpmatch’
          function for easier handling in applications.
     ‘NOEXPR’
          The return value is a regular expression which can be used
          with the ‘regex’ function to recognize a negative response to
          a yes/no question.
     ‘YESSTR’
          The return value is a locale-specific translation of the
          positive response to a yes/no question.

          Using this value is deprecated since it is a very special case
          of message translation, and is better handled by the message
          translation functions (*note Message Translation::).

          The use of this symbol is deprecated.  Instead message
          translation should be used.
     ‘NOSTR’
          The return value is a locale-specific translation of the
          negative response to a yes/no question.  What is said for
          ‘YESSTR’ is also true here.

          The use of this symbol is deprecated.  Instead message
          translation should be used.

     The file ‘langinfo.h’ defines a lot more symbols but none of them
     are official.  Using them is not portable, and the format of the
     return values might change.  Therefore we recommended you not use
     them.

     Note that the return value for any valid argument can be used in
     all situations (with the possible exception of the am/pm time
     formatting codes).  If the user has not selected any locale for the
     appropriate category, ‘nl_langinfo’ returns the information from
     the ‘"C"’ locale.  It is therefore possible to use this function as
     shown in the example below.

     If the argument ITEM is not valid, a pointer to an empty string is
     returned.

   An example of ‘nl_langinfo’ usage is a function which has to print a
given date and time in a locale-specific way.  At first one might think
that, since ‘strftime’ internally uses the locale information, writing
something like the following is enough:

     size_t
     i18n_time_n_data (char *s, size_t len, const struct tm *tp)
     {
       return strftime (s, len, "%X %D", tp);
     }

   The format contains no weekday or month names and therefore is
internationally usable.  Wrong!  The output produced is something like
‘"hh:mm:ss MM/DD/YY"’.  This format is only recognizable in the USA.
Other countries use different formats.  Therefore the function should be
rewritten like this:

     size_t
     i18n_time_n_data (char *s, size_t len, const struct tm *tp)
     {
       return strftime (s, len, nl_langinfo (D_T_FMT), tp);
     }

   Now it uses the date and time format of the locale selected when the
program runs.  If the user selects the locale correctly there should
never be a misunderstanding over the time and date format.


File: libc.info,  Node: Formatting Numbers,  Next: Yes-or-No Questions,  Prev: Locale Information,  Up: Locales

7.8 A dedicated function to format numbers
==========================================

We have seen that the structure returned by ‘localeconv’ as well as the
values given to ‘nl_langinfo’ allow you to retrieve the various pieces
of locale-specific information to format numbers and monetary amounts.
We have also seen that the underlying rules are quite complex.

   Therefore the X/Open standards introduce a function which uses such
locale information, making it easier for the user to format numbers
according to these rules.

 -- Function: ssize_t strfmon (char *S, size_t MAXSIZE, const char
          *FORMAT, …)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe locale | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem |
     *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘strfmon’ function is similar to the ‘strftime’ function in
     that it takes a buffer, its size, a format string, and values to
     write into the buffer as text in a form specified by the format
     string.  Like ‘strftime’, the function also returns the number of
     bytes written into the buffer.

     There are two differences: ‘strfmon’ can take more than one
     argument, and, of course, the format specification is different.
     Like ‘strftime’, the format string consists of normal text, which
     is output as is, and format specifiers, which are indicated by a
     ‘%’.  Immediately after the ‘%’, you can optionally specify various
     flags and formatting information before the main formatting
     character, in a similar way to ‘printf’:

        • Immediately following the ‘%’ there can be one or more of the
          following flags:
          ‘=F’
               The single byte character F is used for this field as the
               numeric fill character.  By default this character is a
               space character.  Filling with this character is only
               performed if a left precision is specified.  It is not
               just to fill to the given field width.
          ‘^’
               The number is printed without grouping the digits
               according to the rules of the current locale.  By default
               grouping is enabled.
          ‘+’, ‘(’
               At most one of these flags can be used.  They select
               which format to represent the sign of a currency amount.
               By default, and if ‘+’ is given, the locale equivalent of
               +/- is used.  If ‘(’ is given, negative amounts are
               enclosed in parentheses.  The exact format is determined
               by the values of the ‘LC_MONETARY’ category of the locale
               selected at program runtime.
          ‘!’
               The output will not contain the currency symbol.
          ‘-’
               The output will be formatted left-justified instead of
               right-justified if it does not fill the entire field
               width.

     The next part of the specification is an optional field width.  If
     no width is specified 0 is taken.  During output, the function
     first determines how much space is required.  If it requires at
     least as many characters as given by the field width, it is output
     using as much space as necessary.  Otherwise, it is extended to use
     the full width by filling with the space character.  The presence
     or absence of the ‘-’ flag determines the side at which such
     padding occurs.  If present, the spaces are added at the right
     making the output left-justified, and vice versa.

     So far the format looks familiar, being similar to the ‘printf’ and
     ‘strftime’ formats.  However, the next two optional fields
     introduce something new.  The first one is a ‘#’ character followed
     by a decimal digit string.  The value of the digit string specifies
     the number of _digit_ positions to the left of the decimal point
     (or equivalent).  This does _not_ include the grouping character
     when the ‘^’ flag is not given.  If the space needed to print the
     number does not fill the whole width, the field is padded at the
     left side with the fill character, which can be selected using the
     ‘=’ flag and by default is a space.  For example, if the field
     width is selected as 6 and the number is 123, the fill character is
     ‘*’ the result will be ‘***123’.

     The second optional field starts with a ‘.’ (period) and consists
     of another decimal digit string.  Its value describes the number of
     characters printed after the decimal point.  The default is
     selected from the current locale (‘frac_digits’, ‘int_frac_digits’,
     see *note General Numeric::).  If the exact representation needs
     more digits than given by the field width, the displayed value is
     rounded.  If the number of fractional digits is selected to be
     zero, no decimal point is printed.

     As a GNU extension, the ‘strfmon’ implementation in the GNU C
     Library allows an optional ‘L’ next as a format modifier.  If this
     modifier is given, the argument is expected to be a ‘long double’
     instead of a ‘double’ value.

     Finally, the last component is a format specifier.  There are three
     specifiers defined:

     ‘i’
          Use the locale’s rules for formatting an international
          currency value.
     ‘n’
          Use the locale’s rules for formatting a national currency
          value.
     ‘%’
          Place a ‘%’ in the output.  There must be no flag, width
          specifier or modifier given, only ‘%%’ is allowed.

     As for ‘printf’, the function reads the format string from left to
     right and uses the values passed to the function following the
     format string.  The values are expected to be either of type
     ‘double’ or ‘long double’, depending on the presence of the
     modifier ‘L’.  The result is stored in the buffer pointed to by S.
     At most MAXSIZE characters are stored.

     The return value of the function is the number of characters stored
     in S, including the terminating ‘NULL’ byte.  If the number of
     characters stored would exceed MAXSIZE, the function returns -1 and
     the content of the buffer S is unspecified.  In this case ‘errno’
     is set to ‘E2BIG’.

   A few examples should make clear how the function works.  It is
assumed that all the following pieces of code are executed in a program
which uses the USA locale (‘en_US’).  The simplest form of the format is
this:

     strfmon (buf, 100, "@%n@%n@%n@", 123.45, -567.89, 12345.678);

The output produced is
     "@$123.45@-$567.89@$12,345.68@"

   We can notice several things here.  First, the widths of the output
numbers are different.  We have not specified a width in the format
string, and so this is no wonder.  Second, the third number is printed
using thousands separators.  The thousands separator for the ‘en_US’
locale is a comma.  The number is also rounded.  .678 is rounded to .68
since the format does not specify a precision and the default value in
the locale is 2.  Finally, note that the national currency symbol is
printed since ‘%n’ was used, not ‘i’.  The next example shows how we can
align the output.

     strfmon (buf, 100, "@%=*11n@%=*11n@%=*11n@", 123.45, -567.89, 12345.678);

The output this time is:

     "@    $123.45@   -$567.89@ $12,345.68@"

   Two things stand out.  Firstly, all fields have the same width
(eleven characters) since this is the width given in the format and
since no number required more characters to be printed.  The second
important point is that the fill character is not used.  This is correct
since the white space was not used to achieve a precision given by a ‘#’
modifier, but instead to fill to the given width.  The difference
becomes obvious if we now add a width specification.

     strfmon (buf, 100, "@%=*11#5n@%=*11#5n@%=*11#5n@",
              123.45, -567.89, 12345.678);

The output is

     "@ $***123.45@-$***567.89@ $12,456.68@"

   Here we can see that all the currency symbols are now aligned, and
that the space between the currency sign and the number is filled with
the selected fill character.  Note that although the width is selected
to be 5 and 123.45 has three digits left of the decimal point, the space
is filled with three asterisks.  This is correct since, as explained
above, the width does not include the positions used to store thousands
separators.  One last example should explain the remaining
functionality.

     strfmon (buf, 100, "@%=0(16#5.3i@%=0(16#5.3i@%=0(16#5.3i@",
              123.45, -567.89, 12345.678);

This rather complex format string produces the following output:

     "@ USD 000123,450 @(USD 000567.890)@ USD 12,345.678 @"

   The most noticeable change is the alternative way of representing
negative numbers.  In financial circles this is often done using
parentheses, and this is what the ‘(’ flag selected.  The fill character
is now ‘0’.  Note that this ‘0’ character is not regarded as a numeric
zero, and therefore the first and second numbers are not printed using a
thousands separator.  Since we used the format specifier ‘i’ instead of
‘n’, the international form of the currency symbol is used.  This is a
four letter string, in this case ‘"USD "’.  The last point is that since
the precision right of the decimal point is selected to be three, the
first and second numbers are printed with an extra zero at the end and
the third number is printed without rounding.


File: libc.info,  Node: Yes-or-No Questions,  Prev: Formatting Numbers,  Up: Locales

7.9 Yes-or-No Questions
=======================

Some non GUI programs ask a yes-or-no question.  If the messages
(especially the questions) are translated into foreign languages, be
sure that you localize the answers too.  It would be very bad habit to
ask a question in one language and request the answer in another, often
English.

   The GNU C Library contains ‘rpmatch’ to give applications easy access
to the corresponding locale definitions.

 -- Function: int rpmatch (const char *RESPONSE)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe locale | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen
     | AC-Unsafe corrupt lock mem fd | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The function ‘rpmatch’ checks the string in RESPONSE for whether or
     not it is a correct yes-or-no answer and if yes, which one.  The
     check uses the ‘YESEXPR’ and ‘NOEXPR’ data in the ‘LC_MESSAGES’
     category of the currently selected locale.  The return value is as
     follows:

     ‘1’
          The user entered an affirmative answer.

     ‘0’
          The user entered a negative answer.

     ‘-1’
          The answer matched neither the ‘YESEXPR’ nor the ‘NOEXPR’
          regular expression.

     This function is not standardized but available beside in the GNU C
     Library at least also in the IBM AIX library.

This function would normally be used like this:

       …
       /* Use a safe default.  */
       _Bool doit = false;

       fputs (gettext ("Do you really want to do this? "), stdout);
       fflush (stdout);
       /* Prepare the ‘getline’ call.  */
       line = NULL;
       len = 0;
       while (getline (&line, &len, stdin) >= 0)
         {
           /* Check the response.  */
           int res = rpmatch (line);
           if (res >= 0)
             {
               /* We got a definitive answer.  */
               if (res > 0)
                 doit = true;
               break;
             }
         }
       /* Free what ‘getline’ allocated.  */
       free (line);

   Note that the loop continues until a read error is detected or until
a definitive (positive or negative) answer is read.


File: libc.info,  Node: Message Translation,  Next: Searching and Sorting,  Prev: Locales,  Up: Top

8 Message Translation
*********************

The program’s interface with the user should be designed to ease the
user’s task.  One way to ease the user’s task is to use messages in
whatever language the user prefers.

   Printing messages in different languages can be implemented in
different ways.  One could add all the different languages in the source
code and choose among the variants every time a message has to be
printed.  This is certainly not a good solution since extending the set
of languages is cumbersome (the code must be changed) and the code
itself can become really big with dozens of message sets.

   A better solution is to keep the message sets for each language in
separate files which are loaded at runtime depending on the language
selection of the user.

   The GNU C Library provides two different sets of functions to support
message translation.  The problem is that neither of the interfaces is
officially defined by the POSIX standard.  The ‘catgets’ family of
functions is defined in the X/Open standard but this is derived from
industry decisions and therefore not necessarily based on reasonable
decisions.

   As mentioned above, the message catalog handling provides easy
extendability by using external data files which contain the message
translations.  I.e., these files contain for each of the messages used
in the program a translation for the appropriate language.  So the tasks
of the message handling functions are

   • locate the external data file with the appropriate translations
   • load the data and make it possible to address the messages
   • map a given key to the translated message

   The two approaches mainly differ in the implementation of this last
step.  Decisions made in the last step influence the rest of the design.

* Menu:

* Message catalogs a la X/Open::  The ‘catgets’ family of functions.
* The Uniforum approach::         The ‘gettext’ family of functions.


File: libc.info,  Node: Message catalogs a la X/Open,  Next: The Uniforum approach,  Up: Message Translation

8.1 X/Open Message Catalog Handling
===================================

The ‘catgets’ functions are based on the simple scheme:

     Associate every message to translate in the source code with a
     unique identifier.  To retrieve a message from a catalog file
     solely the identifier is used.

   This means for the author of the program that s/he will have to make
sure the meaning of the identifier in the program code and in the
message catalogs is always the same.

   Before a message can be translated the catalog file must be located.
The user of the program must be able to guide the responsible function
to find whatever catalog the user wants.  This is separated from what
the programmer had in mind.

   All the types, constants and functions for the ‘catgets’ functions
are defined/declared in the ‘nl_types.h’ header file.

* Menu:

* The catgets Functions::      The ‘catgets’ function family.
* The message catalog files::  Format of the message catalog files.
* The gencat program::         How to generate message catalogs files which
                                can be used by the functions.
* Common Usage::               How to use the ‘catgets’ interface.


File: libc.info,  Node: The catgets Functions,  Next: The message catalog files,  Up: Message catalogs a la X/Open

8.1.1 The ‘catgets’ function family
-----------------------------------

 -- Function: nl_catd catopen (const char *CAT_NAME, int FLAG)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe env | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem | *Note
     POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘catopen’ function tries to locate the message data file named
     CAT_NAME and loads it when found.  The return value is of an opaque
     type and can be used in calls to the other functions to refer to
     this loaded catalog.

     The return value is ‘(nl_catd) -1’ in case the function failed and
     no catalog was loaded.  The global variable ERRNO contains a code
     for the error causing the failure.  But even if the function call
     succeeded this does not mean that all messages can be translated.

     Locating the catalog file must happen in a way which lets the user
     of the program influence the decision.  It is up to the user to
     decide about the language to use and sometimes it is useful to use
     alternate catalog files.  All this can be specified by the user by
     setting some environment variables.

     The first problem is to find out where all the message catalogs are
     stored.  Every program could have its own place to keep all the
     different files but usually the catalog files are grouped by
     languages and the catalogs for all programs are kept in the same
     place.

     To tell the ‘catopen’ function where the catalog for the program
     can be found the user can set the environment variable ‘NLSPATH’ to
     a value which describes her/his choice.  Since this value must be
     usable for different languages and locales it cannot be a simple
     string.  Instead it is a format string (similar to ‘printf’’s).  An
     example is

          /usr/share/locale/%L/%N:/usr/share/locale/%L/LC_MESSAGES/%N

     First one can see that more than one directory can be specified
     (with the usual syntax of separating them by colons).  The next
     things to observe are the format string, ‘%L’ and ‘%N’ in this
     case.  The ‘catopen’ function knows about several of them and the
     replacement for all of them is of course different.

     ‘%N’
          This format element is substituted with the name of the
          catalog file.  This is the value of the CAT_NAME argument
          given to ‘catgets’.

     ‘%L’
          This format element is substituted with the name of the
          currently selected locale for translating messages.  How this
          is determined is explained below.

     ‘%l’
          (This is the lowercase ell.)  This format element is
          substituted with the language element of the locale name.  The
          string describing the selected locale is expected to have the
          form ‘LANG[_TERR[.CODESET]]’ and this format uses the first
          part LANG.

     ‘%t’
          This format element is substituted by the territory part TERR
          of the name of the currently selected locale.  See the
          explanation of the format above.

     ‘%c’
          This format element is substituted by the codeset part CODESET
          of the name of the currently selected locale.  See the
          explanation of the format above.

     ‘%%’
          Since ‘%’ is used as a meta character there must be a way to
          express the ‘%’ character in the result itself.  Using ‘%%’
          does this just like it works for ‘printf’.

     Using ‘NLSPATH’ allows arbitrary directories to be searched for
     message catalogs while still allowing different languages to be
     used.  If the ‘NLSPATH’ environment variable is not set, the
     default value is

          PREFIX/share/locale/%L/%N:PREFIX/share/locale/%L/LC_MESSAGES/%N

     where PREFIX is given to ‘configure’ while installing the GNU C
     Library (this value is in many cases ‘/usr’ or the empty string).

     The remaining problem is to decide which must be used.  The value
     decides about the substitution of the format elements mentioned
     above.  First of all the user can specify a path in the message
     catalog name (i.e., the name contains a slash character).  In this
     situation the ‘NLSPATH’ environment variable is not used.  The
     catalog must exist as specified in the program, perhaps relative to
     the current working directory.  This situation in not desirable and
     catalogs names never should be written this way.  Beside this, this
     behavior is not portable to all other platforms providing the
     ‘catgets’ interface.

     Otherwise the values of environment variables from the standard
     environment are examined (*note Standard Environment::).  Which
     variables are examined is decided by the FLAG parameter of
     ‘catopen’.  If the value is ‘NL_CAT_LOCALE’ (which is defined in
     ‘nl_types.h’) then the ‘catopen’ function uses the name of the
     locale currently selected for the ‘LC_MESSAGES’ category.

     If FLAG is zero the ‘LANG’ environment variable is examined.  This
     is a left-over from the early days when the concept of locales had
     not even reached the level of POSIX locales.

     The environment variable and the locale name should have a value of
     the form ‘LANG[_TERR[.CODESET]]’ as explained above.  If no
     environment variable is set the ‘"C"’ locale is used which prevents
     any translation.

     The return value of the function is in any case a valid string.
     Either it is a translation from a message catalog or it is the same
     as the STRING parameter.  So a piece of code to decide whether a
     translation actually happened must look like this:

          {
            char *trans = catgets (desc, set, msg, input_string);
            if (trans == input_string)
              {
                /* Something went wrong.  */
              }
          }

     When an error occurs the global variable ERRNO is set to

     EBADF
          The catalog does not exist.
     ENOMSG
          The set/message tuple does not name an existing element in the
          message catalog.

     While it sometimes can be useful to test for errors programs
     normally will avoid any test.  If the translation is not available
     it is no big problem if the original, untranslated message is
     printed.  Either the user understands this as well or s/he will
     look for the reason why the messages are not translated.

   Please note that the currently selected locale does not depend on a
call to the ‘setlocale’ function.  It is not necessary that the locale
data files for this locale exist and calling ‘setlocale’ succeeds.  The
‘catopen’ function directly reads the values of the environment
variables.

 -- Function: char * catgets (nl_catd CATALOG_DESC, int SET, int
          MESSAGE, const char *STRING)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Safe | AC-Safe | *Note POSIX Safety
     Concepts::.

     The function ‘catgets’ has to be used to access the message catalog
     previously opened using the ‘catopen’ function.  The CATALOG_DESC
     parameter must be a value previously returned by ‘catopen’.

     The next two parameters, SET and MESSAGE, reflect the internal
     organization of the message catalog files.  This will be explained
     in detail below.  For now it is interesting to know that a catalog
     can consist of several sets and the messages in each thread are
     individually numbered using numbers.  Neither the set number nor
     the message number must be consecutive.  They can be arbitrarily
     chosen.  But each message (unless equal to another one) must have
     its own unique pair of set and message numbers.

     Since it is not guaranteed that the message catalog for the
     language selected by the user exists the last parameter STRING
     helps to handle this case gracefully.  If no matching string can be
     found STRING is returned.  This means for the programmer that

        • the STRING parameters should contain reasonable text (this
          also helps to understand the program seems otherwise there
          would be no hint on the string which is expected to be
          returned.
        • all STRING arguments should be written in the same language.

   It is somewhat uncomfortable to write a program using the ‘catgets’
functions if no supporting functionality is available.  Since each
set/message number tuple must be unique the programmer must keep lists
of the messages at the same time the code is written.  And the work
between several people working on the same project must be coordinated.
We will see how some of these problems can be relaxed a bit (*note
Common Usage::).

 -- Function: int catclose (nl_catd CATALOG_DESC)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe corrupt mem |
     *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘catclose’ function can be used to free the resources
     associated with a message catalog which previously was opened by a
     call to ‘catopen’.  If the resources can be successfully freed the
     function returns ‘0’.  Otherwise it returns ‘−1’ and the global
     variable ERRNO is set.  Errors can occur if the catalog descriptor
     CATALOG_DESC is not valid in which case ERRNO is set to ‘EBADF’.


File: libc.info,  Node: The message catalog files,  Next: The gencat program,  Prev: The catgets Functions,  Up: Message catalogs a la X/Open

8.1.2 Format of the message catalog files
-----------------------------------------

The only reasonable way to translate all the messages of a function and
store the result in a message catalog file which can be read by the
‘catopen’ function is to write all the message text to the translator
and let her/him translate them all.  I.e., we must have a file with
entries which associate the set/message tuple with a specific
translation.  This file format is specified in the X/Open standard and
is as follows:

   • Lines containing only whitespace characters or empty lines are
     ignored.

   • Lines which contain as the first non-whitespace character a ‘$’
     followed by a whitespace character are comment and are also
     ignored.

   • If a line contains as the first non-whitespace characters the
     sequence ‘$set’ followed by a whitespace character an additional
     argument is required to follow.  This argument can either be:

        − a number.  In this case the value of this number determines
          the set to which the following messages are added.

        − an identifier consisting of alphanumeric characters plus the
          underscore character.  In this case the set get automatically
          a number assigned.  This value is one added to the largest set
          number which so far appeared.

          How to use the symbolic names is explained in section *note
          Common Usage::.

          It is an error if a symbol name appears more than once.  All
          following messages are placed in a set with this number.

   • If a line contains as the first non-whitespace characters the
     sequence ‘$delset’ followed by a whitespace character an additional
     argument is required to follow.  This argument can either be:

        − a number.  In this case the value of this number determines
          the set which will be deleted.

        − an identifier consisting of alphanumeric characters plus the
          underscore character.  This symbolic identifier must match a
          name for a set which previously was defined.  It is an error
          if the name is unknown.

     In both cases all messages in the specified set will be removed.
     They will not appear in the output.  But if this set is later again
     selected with a ‘$set’ command again messages could be added and
     these messages will appear in the output.

   • If a line contains after leading whitespaces the sequence ‘$quote’,
     the quoting character used for this input file is changed to the
     first non-whitespace character following ‘$quote’.  If no
     non-whitespace character is present before the line ends quoting is
     disabled.

     By default no quoting character is used.  In this mode strings are
     terminated with the first unescaped line break.  If there is a
     ‘$quote’ sequence present newline need not be escaped.  Instead a
     string is terminated with the first unescaped appearance of the
     quote character.

     A common usage of this feature would be to set the quote character
     to ‘"’.  Then any appearance of the ‘"’ in the strings must be
     escaped using the backslash (i.e., ‘\"’ must be written).

   • Any other line must start with a number or an alphanumeric
     identifier (with the underscore character included).  The following
     characters (starting after the first whitespace character) will
     form the string which gets associated with the currently selected
     set and the message number represented by the number and identifier
     respectively.

     If the start of the line is a number the message number is obvious.
     It is an error if the same message number already appeared for this
     set.

     If the leading token was an identifier the message number gets
     automatically assigned.  The value is the current maximum message
     number for this set plus one.  It is an error if the identifier was
     already used for a message in this set.  It is OK to reuse the
     identifier for a message in another thread.  How to use the
     symbolic identifiers will be explained below (*note Common
     Usage::).  There is one limitation with the identifier: it must not
     be ‘Set’.  The reason will be explained below.

     The text of the messages can contain escape characters.  The usual
     bunch of characters known from the ISO C language are recognized
     (‘\n’, ‘\t’, ‘\v’, ‘\b’, ‘\r’, ‘\f’, ‘\\’, and ‘\NNN’, where NNN is
     the octal coding of a character code).

   *Important:* The handling of identifiers instead of numbers for the
set and messages is a GNU extension.  Systems strictly following the
X/Open specification do not have this feature.  An example for a message
catalog file is this:

     $ This is a leading comment.
     $quote "

     $set SetOne
     1 Message with ID 1.
     two "   Message with ID \"two\", which gets the value 2 assigned"

     $set SetTwo
     $ Since the last set got the number 1 assigned this set has number 2.
     4000 "The numbers can be arbitrary, they need not start at one."

   This small example shows various aspects:
   • Lines 1 and 9 are comments since they start with ‘$’ followed by a
     whitespace.
   • The quoting character is set to ‘"’.  Otherwise the quotes in the
     message definition would have to be omitted and in this case the
     message with the identifier ‘two’ would lose its leading
     whitespace.
   • Mixing numbered messages with messages having symbolic names is no
     problem and the numbering happens automatically.

   While this file format is pretty easy it is not the best possible for
use in a running program.  The ‘catopen’ function would have to parse
the file and handle syntactic errors gracefully.  This is not so easy
and the whole process is pretty slow.  Therefore the ‘catgets’ functions
expect the data in another more compact and ready-to-use file format.
There is a special program ‘gencat’ which is explained in detail in the
next section.

   Files in this other format are not human readable.  To be easy to use
by programs it is a binary file.  But the format is byte order
independent so translation files can be shared by systems of arbitrary
architecture (as long as they use the GNU C Library).

   Details about the binary file format are not important to know since
these files are always created by the ‘gencat’ program.  The sources of
the GNU C Library also provide the sources for the ‘gencat’ program and
so the interested reader can look through these source files to learn
about the file format.


File: libc.info,  Node: The gencat program,  Next: Common Usage,  Prev: The message catalog files,  Up: Message catalogs a la X/Open

8.1.3 Generate Message Catalogs files
-------------------------------------

The ‘gencat’ program is specified in the X/Open standard and the GNU
implementation follows this specification and so processes all correctly
formed input files.  Additionally some extension are implemented which
help to work in a more reasonable way with the ‘catgets’ functions.

   The ‘gencat’ program can be invoked in two ways:

     `gencat [OPTION …] [OUTPUT-FILE [INPUT-FILE …]]`

   This is the interface defined in the X/Open standard.  If no
INPUT-FILE parameter is given, input will be read from standard input.
Multiple input files will be read as if they were concatenated.  If
OUTPUT-FILE is also missing, the output will be written to standard
output.  To provide the interface one is used to from other programs a
second interface is provided.

     `gencat [OPTION …] -o OUTPUT-FILE [INPUT-FILE …]`

   The option ‘-o’ is used to specify the output file and all file
arguments are used as input files.

   Beside this one can use ‘-’ or ‘/dev/stdin’ for INPUT-FILE to denote
the standard input.  Corresponding one can use ‘-’ and ‘/dev/stdout’ for
OUTPUT-FILE to denote standard output.  Using ‘-’ as a file name is
allowed in X/Open while using the device names is a GNU extension.

   The ‘gencat’ program works by concatenating all input files and then
*merging* the resulting collection of message sets with a possibly
existing output file.  This is done by removing all messages with
set/message number tuples matching any of the generated messages from
the output file and then adding all the new messages.  To regenerate a
catalog file while ignoring the old contents therefore requires removing
the output file if it exists.  If the output is written to standard
output no merging takes place.

The following table shows the options understood by the ‘gencat’
program.  The X/Open standard does not specify any options for the
program so all of these are GNU extensions.

‘-V’
‘--version’
     Print the version information and exit.
‘-h’
‘--help’
     Print a usage message listing all available options, then exit
     successfully.
‘--new’
     Do not merge the new messages from the input files with the old
     content of the output file.  The old content of the output file is
     discarded.
‘-H’
‘--header=name’
     This option is used to emit the symbolic names given to sets and
     messages in the input files for use in the program.  Details about
     how to use this are given in the next section.  The NAME parameter
     to this option specifies the name of the output file.  It will
     contain a number of C preprocessor ‘#define’s to associate a name
     with a number.

     Please note that the generated file only contains the symbols from
     the input files.  If the output is merged with the previous content
     of the output file the possibly existing symbols from the file(s)
     which generated the old output files are not in the generated
     header file.


File: libc.info,  Node: Common Usage,  Prev: The gencat program,  Up: Message catalogs a la X/Open

8.1.4 How to use the ‘catgets’ interface
----------------------------------------

The ‘catgets’ functions can be used in two different ways.  By following
slavishly the X/Open specs and not relying on the extension and by using
the GNU extensions.  We will take a look at the former method first to
understand the benefits of extensions.

8.1.4.1 Not using symbolic names
................................

Since the X/Open format of the message catalog files does not allow
symbol names we have to work with numbers all the time.  When we start
writing a program we have to replace all appearances of translatable
strings with something like

     catgets (catdesc, set, msg, "string")

CATGETS is retrieved from a call to ‘catopen’ which is normally done
once at the program start.  The ‘"string"’ is the string we want to
translate.  The problems start with the set and message numbers.

   In a bigger program several programmers usually work at the same time
on the program and so coordinating the number allocation is crucial.
Though no two different strings must be indexed by the same tuple of
numbers it is highly desirable to reuse the numbers for equal strings
with equal translations (please note that there might be strings which
are equal in one language but have different translations due to
difference contexts).

   The allocation process can be relaxed a bit by different set numbers
for different parts of the program.  So the number of developers who
have to coordinate the allocation can be reduced.  But still lists must
be keep track of the allocation and errors can easily happen.  These
errors cannot be discovered by the compiler or the ‘catgets’ functions.
Only the user of the program might see wrong messages printed.  In the
worst cases the messages are so irritating that they cannot be
recognized as wrong.  Think about the translations for ‘"true"’ and
‘"false"’ being exchanged.  This could result in a disaster.

8.1.4.2 Using symbolic names
............................

The problems mentioned in the last section derive from the fact that:

  1. the numbers are allocated once and due to the possibly frequent use
     of them it is difficult to change a number later.
  2. the numbers do not allow guessing anything about the string and
     therefore collisions can easily happen.

   By constantly using symbolic names and by providing a method which
maps the string content to a symbolic name (however this will happen)
one can prevent both problems above.  The cost of this is that the
programmer has to write a complete message catalog file while s/he is
writing the program itself.

   This is necessary since the symbolic names must be mapped to numbers
before the program sources can be compiled.  In the last section it was
described how to generate a header containing the mapping of the names.
E.g., for the example message file given in the last section we could
call the ‘gencat’ program as follows (assume ‘ex.msg’ contains the
sources).

     gencat -H ex.h -o ex.cat ex.msg

This generates a header file with the following content:

     #define SetTwoSet 0x2   /* ex.msg:8 */

     #define SetOneSet 0x1   /* ex.msg:4 */
     #define SetOnetwo 0x2   /* ex.msg:6 */

   As can be seen the various symbols given in the source file are
mangled to generate unique identifiers and these identifiers get numbers
assigned.  Reading the source file and knowing about the rules will
allow to predict the content of the header file (it is deterministic)
but this is not necessary.  The ‘gencat’ program can take care for
everything.  All the programmer has to do is to put the generated header
file in the dependency list of the source files of her/his project and
add a rule to regenerate the header if any of the input files change.

   One word about the symbol mangling.  Every symbol consists of two
parts: the name of the message set plus the name of the message or the
special string ‘Set’.  So ‘SetOnetwo’ means this macro can be used to
access the translation with identifier ‘two’ in the message set
‘SetOne’.

   The other names denote the names of the message sets.  The special
string ‘Set’ is used in the place of the message identifier.

   If in the code the second string of the set ‘SetOne’ is used the C
code should look like this:

     catgets (catdesc, SetOneSet, SetOnetwo,
              "   Message with ID \"two\", which gets the value 2 assigned")

   Writing the function this way will allow to change the message number
and even the set number without requiring any change in the C source
code.  (The text of the string is normally not the same; this is only
for this example.)

8.1.4.3 How does to this allow to develop
.........................................

To illustrate the usual way to work with the symbolic version numbers
here is a little example.  Assume we want to write the very complex and
famous greeting program.  We start by writing the code as usual:

     #include <stdio.h>
     int
     main (void)
     {
       printf ("Hello, world!\n");
       return 0;
     }

   Now we want to internationalize the message and therefore replace the
message with whatever the user wants.

     #include <nl_types.h>
     #include <stdio.h>
     #include "msgnrs.h"
     int
     main (void)
     {
       nl_catd catdesc = catopen ("hello.cat", NL_CAT_LOCALE);
       printf (catgets (catdesc, SetMainSet, SetMainHello,
                        "Hello, world!\n"));
       catclose (catdesc);
       return 0;
     }

   We see how the catalog object is opened and the returned descriptor
used in the other function calls.  It is not really necessary to check
for failure of any of the functions since even in these situations the
functions will behave reasonable.  They simply will be return a
translation.

   What remains unspecified here are the constants ‘SetMainSet’ and
‘SetMainHello’.  These are the symbolic names describing the message.
To get the actual definitions which match the information in the catalog
file we have to create the message catalog source file and process it
using the ‘gencat’ program.

     $ Messages for the famous greeting program.
     $quote "

     $set Main
     Hello "Hallo, Welt!\n"

   Now we can start building the program (assume the message catalog
source file is named ‘hello.msg’ and the program source file ‘hello.c’):

     % gencat -H msgnrs.h -o hello.cat hello.msg
     % cat msgnrs.h
     #define MainSet 0x1     /* hello.msg:4 */
     #define MainHello 0x1   /* hello.msg:5 */
     % gcc -o hello hello.c -I.
     % cp hello.cat /usr/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES
     % echo $LC_ALL
     de
     % ./hello
     Hallo, Welt!
     %

   The call of the ‘gencat’ program creates the missing header file
‘msgnrs.h’ as well as the message catalog binary.  The former is used in
the compilation of ‘hello.c’ while the later is placed in a directory in
which the ‘catopen’ function will try to locate it.  Please check the
‘LC_ALL’ environment variable and the default path for ‘catopen’
presented in the description above.


File: libc.info,  Node: The Uniforum approach,  Prev: Message catalogs a la X/Open,  Up: Message Translation

8.2 The Uniforum approach to Message Translation
================================================

Sun Microsystems tried to standardize a different approach to message
translation in the Uniforum group.  There never was a real standard
defined but still the interface was used in Sun’s operating systems.
Since this approach fits better in the development process of free
software it is also used throughout the GNU project and the GNU
‘gettext’ package provides support for this outside the GNU C Library.

   The code of the ‘libintl’ from GNU ‘gettext’ is the same as the code
in the GNU C Library.  So the documentation in the GNU ‘gettext’ manual
is also valid for the functionality here.  The following text will
describe the library functions in detail.  But the numerous helper
programs are not described in this manual.  Instead people should read
the GNU ‘gettext’ manual (*note GNU gettext utilities: (gettext)Top.).
We will only give a short overview.

   Though the ‘catgets’ functions are available by default on more
systems the ‘gettext’ interface is at least as portable as the former.
The GNU ‘gettext’ package can be used wherever the functions are not
available.

* Menu:

* Message catalogs with gettext::  The ‘gettext’ family of functions.
* Helper programs for gettext::    Programs to handle message catalogs
                                    for ‘gettext’.


File: libc.info,  Node: Message catalogs with gettext,  Next: Helper programs for gettext,  Up: The Uniforum approach

8.2.1 The ‘gettext’ family of functions
---------------------------------------

The paradigms underlying the ‘gettext’ approach to message translations
is different from that of the ‘catgets’ functions the basic functionally
is equivalent.  There are functions of the following categories:

* Menu:

* Translation with gettext::       What has to be done to translate a message.
* Locating gettext catalog::       How to determine which catalog to be used.
* Advanced gettext functions::     Additional functions for more complicated
                                    situations.
* Charset conversion in gettext::  How to specify the output character set
                                    ‘gettext’ uses.
* GUI program problems::           How to use ‘gettext’ in GUI programs.
* Using gettextized software::     The possibilities of the user to influence
                                    the way ‘gettext’ works.


File: libc.info,  Node: Translation with gettext,  Next: Locating gettext catalog,  Up: Message catalogs with gettext

8.2.1.1 What has to be done to translate a message?
...................................................

The ‘gettext’ functions have a very simple interface.  The most basic
function just takes the string which shall be translated as the argument
and it returns the translation.  This is fundamentally different from
the ‘catgets’ approach where an extra key is necessary and the original
string is only used for the error case.

   If the string which has to be translated is the only argument this of
course means the string itself is the key.  I.e., the translation will
be selected based on the original string.  The message catalogs must
therefore contain the original strings plus one translation for any such
string.  The task of the ‘gettext’ function is to compare the argument
string with the available strings in the catalog and return the
appropriate translation.  Of course this process is optimized so that
this process is not more expensive than an access using an atomic key
like in ‘catgets’.

   The ‘gettext’ approach has some advantages but also some
disadvantages.  Please see the GNU ‘gettext’ manual for a detailed
discussion of the pros and cons.

   All the definitions and declarations for ‘gettext’ can be found in
the ‘libintl.h’ header file.  On systems where these functions are not
part of the C library they can be found in a separate library named
‘libintl.a’ (or accordingly different for shared libraries).

 -- Function: char * gettext (const char *MSGID)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe env | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen |
     AC-Unsafe corrupt lock fd mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘gettext’ function searches the currently selected message
     catalogs for a string which is equal to MSGID.  If there is such a
     string available it is returned.  Otherwise the argument string
     MSGID is returned.

     Please note that although the return value is ‘char *’ the returned
     string must not be changed.  This broken type results from the
     history of the function and does not reflect the way the function
     should be used.

     Please note that above we wrote “message catalogs” (plural).  This
     is a specialty of the GNU implementation of these functions and we
     will say more about this when we talk about the ways message
     catalogs are selected (*note Locating gettext catalog::).

     The ‘gettext’ function does not modify the value of the global
     ERRNO variable.  This is necessary to make it possible to write
     something like

            printf (gettext ("Operation failed: %m\n"));

     Here the ERRNO value is used in the ‘printf’ function while
     processing the ‘%m’ format element and if the ‘gettext’ function
     would change this value (it is called before ‘printf’ is called) we
     would get a wrong message.

     So there is no easy way to detect a missing message catalog besides
     comparing the argument string with the result.  But it is normally
     the task of the user to react on missing catalogs.  The program
     cannot guess when a message catalog is really necessary since for a
     user who speaks the language the program was developed in, the
     message does not need any translation.

   The remaining two functions to access the message catalog add some
functionality to select a message catalog which is not the default one.
This is important if parts of the program are developed independently.
Every part can have its own message catalog and all of them can be used
at the same time.  The C library itself is an example: internally it
uses the ‘gettext’ functions but since it must not depend on a currently
selected default message catalog it must specify all ambiguous
information.

 -- Function: char * dgettext (const char *DOMAINNAME, const char
          *MSGID)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe env | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen |
     AC-Unsafe corrupt lock fd mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘dgettext’ function acts just like the ‘gettext’ function.  It
     only takes an additional first argument DOMAINNAME which guides the
     selection of the message catalogs which are searched for the
     translation.  If the DOMAINNAME parameter is the null pointer the
     ‘dgettext’ function is exactly equivalent to ‘gettext’ since the
     default value for the domain name is used.

     As for ‘gettext’ the return value type is ‘char *’ which is an
     anachronism.  The returned string must never be modified.

 -- Function: char * dcgettext (const char *DOMAINNAME, const char
          *MSGID, int CATEGORY)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe env | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen |
     AC-Unsafe corrupt lock fd mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘dcgettext’ adds another argument to those which ‘dgettext’
     takes.  This argument CATEGORY specifies the last piece of
     information needed to localize the message catalog.  I.e., the
     domain name and the locale category exactly specify which message
     catalog has to be used (relative to a given directory, see below).

     The ‘dgettext’ function can be expressed in terms of ‘dcgettext’ by
     using

          dcgettext (domain, string, LC_MESSAGES)

     instead of

          dgettext (domain, string)

     This also shows which values are expected for the third parameter.
     One has to use the available selectors for the categories available
     in ‘locale.h’.  Normally the available values are ‘LC_CTYPE’,
     ‘LC_COLLATE’, ‘LC_MESSAGES’, ‘LC_MONETARY’, ‘LC_NUMERIC’, and
     ‘LC_TIME’.  Please note that ‘LC_ALL’ must not be used and even
     though the names might suggest this, there is no relation to the
     environment variable of this name.

     The ‘dcgettext’ function is only implemented for compatibility with
     other systems which have ‘gettext’ functions.  There is not really
     any situation where it is necessary (or useful) to use a different
     value than ‘LC_MESSAGES’ for the CATEGORY parameter.  We are
     dealing with messages here and any other choice can only be
     irritating.

     As for ‘gettext’ the return value type is ‘char *’ which is an
     anachronism.  The returned string must never be modified.

   When using the three functions above in a program it is a frequent
case that the MSGID argument is a constant string.  So it is worthwhile
to optimize this case.  Thinking shortly about this one will realize
that as long as no new message catalog is loaded the translation of a
message will not change.  This optimization is actually implemented by
the ‘gettext’, ‘dgettext’ and ‘dcgettext’ functions.


File: libc.info,  Node: Locating gettext catalog,  Next: Advanced gettext functions,  Prev: Translation with gettext,  Up: Message catalogs with gettext

8.2.1.2 How to determine which catalog to be used
.................................................

The functions to retrieve the translations for a given message have a
remarkable simple interface.  But to provide the user of the program
still the opportunity to select exactly the translation s/he wants and
also to provide the programmer the possibility to influence the way to
locate the search for catalogs files there is a quite complicated
underlying mechanism which controls all this.  The code is complicated
the use is easy.

   Basically we have two different tasks to perform which can also be
performed by the ‘catgets’ functions:

  1. Locate the set of message catalogs.  There are a number of files
     for different languages which all belong to the package.  Usually
     they are all stored in the filesystem below a certain directory.

     There can be arbitrarily many packages installed and they can
     follow different guidelines for the placement of their files.

  2. Relative to the location specified by the package the actual
     translation files must be searched, based on the wishes of the
     user.  I.e., for each language the user selects the program should
     be able to locate the appropriate file.

   This is the functionality required by the specifications for
‘gettext’ and this is also what the ‘catgets’ functions are able to do.
But there are some problems unresolved:

   • The language to be used can be specified in several different ways.
     There is no generally accepted standard for this and the user
     always expects the program to understand what s/he means.  E.g., to
     select the German translation one could write ‘de’, ‘german’, or
     ‘deutsch’ and the program should always react the same.

   • Sometimes the specification of the user is too detailed.  If s/he,
     e.g., specifies ‘de_DE.ISO-8859-1’ which means German, spoken in
     Germany, coded using the ISO 8859-1 character set there is the
     possibility that a message catalog matching this exactly is not
     available.  But there could be a catalog matching ‘de’ and if the
     character set used on the machine is always ISO 8859-1 there is no
     reason why this later message catalog should not be used.  (We call
     this "message inheritance".)

   • If a catalog for a wanted language is not available it is not
     always the second best choice to fall back on the language of the
     developer and simply not translate any message.  Instead a user
     might be better able to read the messages in another language and
     so the user of the program should be able to define a precedence
     order of languages.

   We can divide the configuration actions in two parts: the one is
performed by the programmer, the other by the user.  We will start with
the functions the programmer can use since the user configuration will
be based on this.

   As the functions described in the last sections already mention
separate sets of messages can be selected by a "domain name".  This is a
simple string which should be unique for each program part that uses a
separate domain.  It is possible to use in one program arbitrarily many
domains at the same time.  E.g., the GNU C Library itself uses a domain
named ‘libc’ while the program using the C Library could use a domain
named ‘foo’.  The important point is that at any time exactly one domain
is active.  This is controlled with the following function.

 -- Function: char * textdomain (const char *DOMAINNAME)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe lock heap | AC-Unsafe lock mem |
     *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘textdomain’ function sets the default domain, which is used in
     all future ‘gettext’ calls, to DOMAINNAME.  Please note that
     ‘dgettext’ and ‘dcgettext’ calls are not influenced if the
     DOMAINNAME parameter of these functions is not the null pointer.

     Before the first call to ‘textdomain’ the default domain is
     ‘messages’.  This is the name specified in the specification of the
     ‘gettext’ API. This name is as good as any other name.  No program
     should ever really use a domain with this name since this can only
     lead to problems.

     The function returns the value which is from now on taken as the
     default domain.  If the system went out of memory the returned
     value is ‘NULL’ and the global variable ERRNO is set to ‘ENOMEM’.
     Despite the return value type being ‘char *’ the return string must
     not be changed.  It is allocated internally by the ‘textdomain’
     function.

     If the DOMAINNAME parameter is the null pointer no new default
     domain is set.  Instead the currently selected default domain is
     returned.

     If the DOMAINNAME parameter is the empty string the default domain
     is reset to its initial value, the domain with the name ‘messages’.
     This possibility is questionable to use since the domain ‘messages’
     really never should be used.

 -- Function: char * bindtextdomain (const char *DOMAINNAME, const char
          *DIRNAME)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem | *Note
     POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘bindtextdomain’ function can be used to specify the directory
     which contains the message catalogs for domain DOMAINNAME for the
     different languages.  To be correct, this is the directory where
     the hierarchy of directories is expected.  Details are explained
     below.

     For the programmer it is important to note that the translations
     which come with the program have to be placed in a directory
     hierarchy starting at, say, ‘/foo/bar’.  Then the program should
     make a ‘bindtextdomain’ call to bind the domain for the current
     program to this directory.  So it is made sure the catalogs are
     found.  A correctly running program does not depend on the user
     setting an environment variable.

     The ‘bindtextdomain’ function can be used several times and if the
     DOMAINNAME argument is different the previously bound domains will
     not be overwritten.

     If the program which wish to use ‘bindtextdomain’ at some point of
     time use the ‘chdir’ function to change the current working
     directory it is important that the DIRNAME strings ought to be an
     absolute pathname.  Otherwise the addressed directory might vary
     with the time.

     If the DIRNAME parameter is the null pointer ‘bindtextdomain’
     returns the currently selected directory for the domain with the
     name DOMAINNAME.

     The ‘bindtextdomain’ function returns a pointer to a string
     containing the name of the selected directory name.  The string is
     allocated internally in the function and must not be changed by the
     user.  If the system went out of core during the execution of
     ‘bindtextdomain’ the return value is ‘NULL’ and the global variable
     ERRNO is set accordingly.


File: libc.info,  Node: Advanced gettext functions,  Next: Charset conversion in gettext,  Prev: Locating gettext catalog,  Up: Message catalogs with gettext

8.2.1.3 Additional functions for more complicated situations
............................................................

The functions of the ‘gettext’ family described so far (and all the
‘catgets’ functions as well) have one problem in the real world which
has been neglected completely in all existing approaches.  What is meant
here is the handling of plural forms.

   Looking through Unix source code before the time anybody thought
about internationalization (and, sadly, even afterwards) one can often
find code similar to the following:

        printf ("%d file%s deleted", n, n == 1 ? "" : "s");

After the first complaints from people internationalizing the code
people either completely avoided formulations like this or used strings
like ‘"file(s)"’.  Both look unnatural and should be avoided.  First
tries to solve the problem correctly looked like this:

        if (n == 1)
          printf ("%d file deleted", n);
        else
          printf ("%d files deleted", n);

   But this does not solve the problem.  It helps languages where the
plural form of a noun is not simply constructed by adding an ‘s’ but
that is all.  Once again people fell into the trap of believing the
rules their language uses are universal.  But the handling of plural
forms differs widely between the language families.  There are two
things we can differ between (and even inside language families);

   • The form how plural forms are build differs.  This is a problem
     with language which have many irregularities.  German, for
     instance, is a drastic case.  Though English and German are part of
     the same language family (Germanic), the almost regular forming of
     plural noun forms (appending an ‘s’) is hardly found in German.

   • The number of plural forms differ.  This is somewhat surprising for
     those who only have experiences with Romanic and Germanic languages
     since here the number is the same (there are two).

     But other language families have only one form or many forms.  More
     information on this in an extra section.

   The consequence of this is that application writers should not try to
solve the problem in their code.  This would be localization since it is
only usable for certain, hardcoded language environments.  Instead the
extended ‘gettext’ interface should be used.

   These extra functions are taking instead of the one key string two
strings and a numerical argument.  The idea behind this is that using
the numerical argument and the first string as a key, the implementation
can select using rules specified by the translator the right plural
form.  The two string arguments then will be used to provide a return
value in case no message catalog is found (similar to the normal
‘gettext’ behavior).  In this case the rules for Germanic language are
used and it is assumed that the first string argument is the singular
form, the second the plural form.

   This has the consequence that programs without language catalogs can
display the correct strings only if the program itself is written using
a Germanic language.  This is a limitation but since the GNU C Library
(as well as the GNU ‘gettext’ package) is written as part of the GNU
package and the coding standards for the GNU project require programs to
be written in English, this solution nevertheless fulfills its purpose.

 -- Function: char * ngettext (const char *MSGID1, const char *MSGID2,
          unsigned long int N)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe env | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen |
     AC-Unsafe corrupt lock fd mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘ngettext’ function is similar to the ‘gettext’ function as it
     finds the message catalogs in the same way.  But it takes two extra
     arguments.  The MSGID1 parameter must contain the singular form of
     the string to be converted.  It is also used as the key for the
     search in the catalog.  The MSGID2 parameter is the plural form.
     The parameter N is used to determine the plural form.  If no
     message catalog is found MSGID1 is returned if ‘n == 1’, otherwise
     ‘msgid2’.

     An example for the use of this function is:

            printf (ngettext ("%d file removed", "%d files removed", n), n);

     Please note that the numeric value N has to be passed to the
     ‘printf’ function as well.  It is not sufficient to pass it only to
     ‘ngettext’.

 -- Function: char * dngettext (const char *DOMAIN, const char *MSGID1,
          const char *MSGID2, unsigned long int N)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe env | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen |
     AC-Unsafe corrupt lock fd mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘dngettext’ is similar to the ‘dgettext’ function in the way
     the message catalog is selected.  The difference is that it takes
     two extra parameters to provide the correct plural form.  These two
     parameters are handled in the same way ‘ngettext’ handles them.

 -- Function: char * dcngettext (const char *DOMAIN, const char *MSGID1,
          const char *MSGID2, unsigned long int N, int CATEGORY)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe env | AS-Unsafe corrupt heap lock dlopen |
     AC-Unsafe corrupt lock fd mem | *Note POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘dcngettext’ is similar to the ‘dcgettext’ function in the way
     the message catalog is selected.  The difference is that it takes
     two extra parameters to provide the correct plural form.  These two
     parameters are handled in the same way ‘ngettext’ handles them.

The problem of plural forms
...........................

A description of the problem can be found at the beginning of the last
section.  Now there is the question how to solve it.  Without the input
of linguists (which was not available) it was not possible to determine
whether there are only a few different forms in which plural forms are
formed or whether the number can increase with every new supported
language.

   Therefore the solution implemented is to allow the translator to
specify the rules of how to select the plural form.  Since the formula
varies with every language this is the only viable solution except for
hardcoding the information in the code (which still would require the
possibility of extensions to not prevent the use of new languages).  The
details are explained in the GNU ‘gettext’ manual.  Here only a bit of
information is provided.

   The information about the plural form selection has to be stored in
the header entry (the one with the empty ‘msgid’ string).  It looks like
this:

     Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n == 1 ? 0 : 1;

   The ‘nplurals’ value must be a decimal number which specifies how
many different plural forms exist for this language.  The string
following ‘plural’ is an expression using the C language syntax.
Exceptions are that no negative numbers are allowed, numbers must be
decimal, and the only variable allowed is ‘n’.  This expression will be
evaluated whenever one of the functions ‘ngettext’, ‘dngettext’, or
‘dcngettext’ is called.  The numeric value passed to these functions is
then substituted for all uses of the variable ‘n’ in the expression.
The resulting value then must be greater or equal to zero and smaller
than the value given as the value of ‘nplurals’.

The following rules are known at this point.  The language with families
are listed.  But this does not necessarily mean the information can be
generalized for the whole family (as can be easily seen in the table
below).(1)

Only one form:
     Some languages only require one single form.  There is no
     distinction between the singular and plural form.  An appropriate
     header entry would look like this:

          Plural-Forms: nplurals=1; plural=0;

     Languages with this property include:

     Finno-Ugric family
          Hungarian
     Asian family
          Japanese, Korean
     Turkic/Altaic family
          Turkish

Two forms, singular used for one only
     This is the form used in most existing programs since it is what
     English uses.  A header entry would look like this:

          Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n != 1;

     (Note: this uses the feature of C expressions that boolean
     expressions have to value zero or one.)

     Languages with this property include:

     Germanic family
          Danish, Dutch, English, German, Norwegian, Swedish
     Finno-Ugric family
          Estonian, Finnish
     Latin/Greek family
          Greek
     Semitic family
          Hebrew
     Romance family
          Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
     Artificial
          Esperanto

Two forms, singular used for zero and one
     Exceptional case in the language family.  The header entry would
     be:

          Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n>1;

     Languages with this property include:

     Romanic family
          French, Brazilian Portuguese

Three forms, special case for zero
     The header entry would be:

          Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : n != 0 ? 1 : 2;

     Languages with this property include:

     Baltic family
          Latvian

Three forms, special cases for one and two
     The header entry would be:

          Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=n==1 ? 0 : n==2 ? 1 : 2;

     Languages with this property include:

     Celtic
          Gaeilge (Irish)

Three forms, special case for numbers ending in 1[2-9]
     The header entry would look like this:

          Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; \
              plural=n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : \
                     n%10>=2 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2;

     Languages with this property include:

     Baltic family
          Lithuanian

Three forms, special cases for numbers ending in 1 and 2, 3, 4, except those ending in 1[1-4]
     The header entry would look like this:

          Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; \
              plural=n%100/10==1 ? 2 : n%10==1 ? 0 : (n+9)%10>3 ? 2 : 1;

     Languages with this property include:

     Slavic family
          Croatian, Czech, Russian, Ukrainian

Three forms, special cases for 1 and 2, 3, 4
     The header entry would look like this:

          Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; \
              plural=(n==1) ? 1 : (n>=2 && n<=4) ? 2 : 0;

     Languages with this property include:

     Slavic family
          Slovak

Three forms, special case for one and some numbers ending in 2, 3, or 4
     The header entry would look like this:

          Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; \
              plural=n==1 ? 0 : \
                     n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2;

     Languages with this property include:

     Slavic family
          Polish

Four forms, special case for one and all numbers ending in 02, 03, or 04
     The header entry would look like this:

          Plural-Forms: nplurals=4; \
              plural=n%100==1 ? 0 : n%100==2 ? 1 : n%100==3 || n%100==4 ? 2 : 3;

     Languages with this property include:

     Slavic family
          Slovenian

   ---------- Footnotes ----------

   (1) Additions are welcome.  Send appropriate information to
<bug-glibc-manual@gnu.org>.


File: libc.info,  Node: Charset conversion in gettext,  Next: GUI program problems,  Prev: Advanced gettext functions,  Up: Message catalogs with gettext

8.2.1.4 How to specify the output character set ‘gettext’ uses
..............................................................

‘gettext’ not only looks up a translation in a message catalog, it also
converts the translation on the fly to the desired output character set.
This is useful if the user is working in a different character set than
the translator who created the message catalog, because it avoids
distributing variants of message catalogs which differ only in the
character set.

   The output character set is, by default, the value of ‘nl_langinfo
(CODESET)’, which depends on the ‘LC_CTYPE’ part of the current locale.
But programs which store strings in a locale independent way (e.g.
UTF-8) can request that ‘gettext’ and related functions return the
translations in that encoding, by use of the ‘bind_textdomain_codeset’
function.

   Note that the MSGID argument to ‘gettext’ is not subject to character
set conversion.  Also, when ‘gettext’ does not find a translation for
MSGID, it returns MSGID unchanged – independently of the current output
character set.  It is therefore recommended that all MSGIDs be US-ASCII
strings.

 -- Function: char * bind_textdomain_codeset (const char *DOMAINNAME,
          const char *CODESET)
     Preliminary: | MT-Safe | AS-Unsafe heap | AC-Unsafe mem | *Note
     POSIX Safety Concepts::.

     The ‘bind_textdomain_codeset’ function can be used to specify the
     output character set for message catalogs for domain DOMAINNAME.
     The CODESET argument must be a valid codeset name which can be used
     for the ‘iconv_open’ function, or a null pointer.

     If the CODESET parameter is the null pointer,
     ‘bind_textdomain_codeset’ returns the currently selected codeset
     for the domain with the name DOMAINNAME.  It returns ‘NULL’ if no
     codeset has yet been selected.

     The ‘bind_textdomain_codeset’ function can be used several times.
     If used multiple times with the same DOMAINNAME argument, the later
     call overrides the settings made by the earlier one.

     The ‘bind_textdomain_codeset’ function returns a pointer to a
     string containing the name of the selected codeset.  The string is
     allocated internally in the function and must not be changed by the
     user.  If the system went out of core during the execution of
     ‘bind_textdomain_codeset’, the return value is ‘NULL’ and the
     global variable ERRNO is set accordingly.


File: libc.info,  Node: GUI program problems,  Next: Using gettextized software,  Prev: Charset conversion in gettext,  Up: Message catalogs with gettext

8.2.1.5 How to use ‘gettext’ in GUI programs
............................................

One place where the ‘gettext’ functions, if used normally, have big
problems is within programs with graphical user interfaces (GUIs).  The
problem is that many of the strings which have to be translated are very
short.  They have to appear in pull-down menus which restricts the
length.  But strings which are not containing entire sentences or at
least large fragments of a sentence may appear in more than one
situation in the program but might have different translations.  This is
especially true for the one-word strings which are frequently used in
GUI programs.

   As a consequence many people say that the ‘gettext’ approach is wrong
and instead ‘catgets’ should be used which indeed does not have this
problem.  But there is a very simple and powerful method to handle these
kind of problems with the ‘gettext’ functions.

As an example consider the following fictional situation.  A GUI program
has a menu bar with the following entries:

     +------------+------------+--------------------------------------+
     | File       | Printer    |                                      |
     +------------+------------+--------------------------------------+
     | Open     | | Select   |
     | New      | | Open     |
     +----------+ | Connect  |
                  +----------+

   To have the strings ‘File’, ‘Printer’, ‘Open’, ‘New’, ‘Select’, and
‘Connect’ translated there has to be at some point in the code a call to
a function of the ‘gettext’ family.  But in two places the string passed
into the function would be ‘Open’.  The translations might not be the
same and therefore we are in the dilemma described above.

   One solution to this problem is to artificially extend the strings to
make them unambiguous.  But what would the program do if no translation
is available?  The extended string is not what should be printed.  So we
should use a slightly modified version of the functions.

   To extend the strings a uniform method should be used.  E.g., in the
example above, the strings could be chosen as

     Menu|File
     Menu|Printer
     Menu|File|Open
     Menu|File|New
     Menu|Printer|Select
     Menu|Printer|Open
     Menu|Printer|Connect

   Now all the strings are different and if now instead of ‘gettext’ the
following little wrapper function is used, everything works just fine:

       char *
       sgettext (const char *msgid)
       {
         char *msgval = gettext (msgid);
         if (msgval == msgid)
           msgval = strrchr (msgid, '|') + 1;
         return msgval;
       }

   What this little function does is to recognize the case when no
translation is available.  This can be done very efficiently by a
pointer comparison since the return value is the input value.  If there
is no translation we know that the input string is in the format we used
for the Menu entries and therefore contains a ‘|’ character.  We simply
search for the last occurrence of this character and return a pointer to
the character following it.  That’s it!

   If one now consistently uses the extended string form and replaces
the ‘gettext’ calls with calls to ‘sgettext’ (this is normally limited
to very few places in the GUI implementation) then it is possible to
produce a program which can be internationalized.

   With advanced compilers (such as GNU C) one can write the ‘sgettext’
functions as an inline function or as a macro like this:

     #define sgettext(msgid) \
       ({ const char *__msgid = (msgid);            \
          char *__msgstr = gettext (__msgid);       \
          if (__msgval == __msgid)                  \
            __msgval = strrchr (__msgid, '|') + 1;  \
          __msgval; })

   The other ‘gettext’ functions (‘dgettext’, ‘dcgettext’ and the
‘ngettext’ equivalents) can and should have corresponding functions as
well which look almost identical, except for the parameters and the call
to the underlying function.

   Now there is of course the question why such functions do not exist
in the GNU C Library?  There are two parts of the answer to this
question.

   • They are easy to write and therefore can be provided by the project
     they are used in.  This is not an answer by itself and must be seen
     together with the second part which is:

   • There is no way the C library can contain a version which can work
     everywhere.  The problem is the selection of the character to
     separate the prefix from the actual string in the extended string.
     The examples above used ‘|’ which is a quite good choice because it
     resembles a notation frequently used in this context and it also is
     a character not often used in message strings.

     But what if the character is used in message strings.  Or if the
     chose character is not available in the character set on the
     machine one compiles (e.g., ‘|’ is not required to exist for ISO C;
     this is why the ‘iso646.h’ file exists in ISO C programming
     environments).

   There is only one more comment to make left.  The wrapper function
above requires that the translations strings are not extended
themselves.  This is only logical.  There is no need to disambiguate the
strings (since they are never used as keys for a search) and one also
saves quite some memory and disk space by doing this.


File: libc.info,  Node: Using gettextized software,  Prev: GUI program problems,  Up: Message catalogs with gettext

8.2.1.6 User influence on ‘gettext’
...................................

The last sections described what the programmer can do to
internationalize the messages of the program.  But it is finally up to
the user to select the message s/he wants to see.  S/He must understand
them.

   The POSIX locale model uses the environment variables ‘LC_COLLATE’,
‘LC_CTYPE’, ‘LC_MESSAGES’, ‘LC_MONETARY’, ‘LC_NUMERIC’, and ‘LC_TIME’ to
select the locale which is to be used.  This way the user can influence
lots of functions.  As we mentioned above, the ‘gettext’ functions also
take advantage of this.

   To understand how this happens it is necessary to take a look at the
various components of the filename which gets computed to locate a
message catalog.  It is composed as follows:

     DIR_NAME/LOCALE/LC_CATEGORY/DOMAIN_NAME.mo

   The default value for DIR_NAME is system specific.  It is computed
from the value given as the prefix while configuring the C library.
This value normally is ‘/usr’ or ‘/’.  For the former the complete
DIR_NAME is:

     /usr/share/locale

   We can use ‘/usr/share’ since the ‘.mo’ files containing the message
catalogs are system independent, so all systems can use the same files.
If the program executed the ‘bindtextdomain’ function for the message
domain that is currently handled, the ‘dir_name’ component is exactly
the value which was given to the function as the second parameter.
I.e., ‘bindtextdomain’ allows overwriting the only system dependent and
fixed value to make it possible to address files anywhere in the
filesystem.

   The CATEGORY is the name of the locale category which was selected in
the program code.  For ‘gettext’ and ‘dgettext’ this is always
‘LC_MESSAGES’, for ‘dcgettext’ this is selected by the value of the
third parameter.  As said above it should be avoided to ever use a
category other than ‘LC_MESSAGES’.

   The LOCALE component is computed based on the category used.  Just
like for the ‘setlocale’ function here comes the user selection into the
play.  Some environment variables are examined in a fixed order and the
first environment variable set determines the return value of the lookup
process.  In detail, for the category ‘LC_xxx’ the following variables
in this order are examined:

‘LANGUAGE’
‘LC_ALL’
‘LC_xxx’
‘LANG’

   This looks very familiar.  With the exception of the ‘LANGUAGE’
environment variable this is exactly the lookup order the ‘setlocale’
function uses.  But why introduce the ‘LANGUAGE’ variable?

   The reason is that the syntax of the values these variables can have
is different to what is expected by the ‘setlocale’ function.  If we
would set ‘LC_ALL’ to a value following the extended syntax that would
mean the ‘setlocale’ function will never be able to use the value of
this variable as well.  An additional variable removes this problem plus
we can select the language independently of the locale setting which
sometimes is useful.

   While for the ‘LC_xxx’ variables the value should consist of exactly
one specification of a locale the ‘LANGUAGE’ variable’s value can
consist of a colon separated list of locale names.  The attentive reader
will realize that this is the way we manage to implement one of our
additional demands above: we want to be able to specify an ordered list
of languages.

   Back to the constructed filename we have only one component missing.
The DOMAIN_NAME part is the name which was either registered using the
‘textdomain’ function or which was given to ‘dgettext’ or ‘dcgettext’ as
the first parameter.  Now it becomes obvious that a good choice for the
domain name in the program code is a string which is closely related to
the program/package name.  E.g., for the GNU C Library the domain name
is ‘libc’.

A limited piece of example code should show how the program is supposed
to work:

     {
       setlocale (LC_ALL, "");
       textdomain ("test-package");
       bindtextdomain ("test-package", "/usr/local/share/locale");
       puts (gettext ("Hello, world!"));
     }

   At the program start the default domain is ‘messages’, and the
default locale is "C". The ‘setlocale’ call sets the locale according to
the user’s environment variables; remember that correct functioning of
‘gettext’ relies on the correct setting of the ‘LC_MESSAGES’ locale (for
looking up the message catalog) and of the ‘LC_CTYPE’ locale (for the
character set conversion).  The ‘textdomain’ call changes the default
domain to ‘test-package’.  The ‘bindtextdomain’ call specifies that the
message catalogs for the domain ‘test-package’ can be found below the
directory ‘/usr/local/share/locale’.

   If the user sets in her/his environment the variable ‘LANGUAGE’ to
‘de’ the ‘gettext’ function will try to use the translations from the
file

     /usr/local/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/test-package.mo

   From the above descriptions it should be clear which component of
this filename is determined by which source.

   In the above example we assumed the ‘LANGUAGE’ environment variable
to be ‘de’.  This might be an appropriate selection but what happens if
the user wants to use ‘LC_ALL’ because of the wider usability and here
the required value is ‘de_DE.ISO-8859-1’?  We already mentioned above
that a situation like this is not infrequent.  E.g., a person might
prefer reading a dialect and if this is not available fall back on the
standard language.

   The ‘gettext’ functions know about situations like this and can
handle them gracefully.  The functions recognize the format of the value
of the environment variable.  It can split the value is different pieces
and by leaving out the only or the other part it can construct new
values.  This happens of course in a predictable way.  To understand
this one must know the format of the environment variable value.  There
is one more or less standardized form, originally from the X/Open
specification:

   ‘language[_territory[.codeset]][@modifier]’

   Less specific locale names will be stripped in the order of the
following list:

  1. ‘codeset’
  2. ‘normalized codeset’
  3. ‘territory’
  4. ‘modifier’

   The ‘language’ field will never be dropped for obvious reasons.

   The only new thing is the ‘normalized codeset’ entry.  This is
another goodie which is introduced to help reduce the chaos which
derives from the inability of people to standardize the names of
character sets.  Instead of ISO-8859-1 one can often see 8859-1, 88591,
iso8859-1, or iso_8859-1.  The ‘normalized codeset’ value is generated
from the user-provided character set name by applying the following
rules:

  1. Remove all characters besides numbers and letters.
  2. Fold letters to lowercase.
  3. If the same only contains digits prepend the string ‘"iso"’.

So all of the above names will be normalized to ‘iso88591’.  This allows
the program user much more freedom in choosing the locale name.

   Even this extended functionality still does not help to solve the
problem that completely different names can be used to denote the same
locale (e.g., ‘de’ and ‘german’).  To be of help in this situation the
locale implementation and also the ‘gettext’ functions know about
aliases.

   The file ‘/usr/share/locale/locale.alias’ (replace ‘/usr’ with
whatever prefix you used for configuring the C library) contains a
mapping of alternative names to more regular names.  The system manager
is free to add new entries to fill her/his own needs.  The selected
locale from the environment is compared with the entries in the first
column of this file ignoring the case.  If they match, the value of the
second column is used instead for the further handling.

   In the description of the format of the environment variables we
already mentioned the character set as a factor in the selection of the
message catalog.  In fact, only catalogs which contain text written
using the character set of the system/program can be used (directly;
there will come a solution for this some day).  This means for the user
that s/he will always have to take care of this.  If in the collection
of the message catalogs there are files for the same language but coded
using different character sets the user has to be careful.


File: libc.info,  Node: Helper programs for gettext,  Prev: Message catalogs with gettext,  Up: The Uniforum approach

8.2.2 Programs to handle message catalogs for ‘gettext’
-------------------------------------------------------

The GNU C Library does not contain the source code for the programs to
handle message catalogs for the ‘gettext’ functions.  As part of the GNU
project the GNU gettext package contains everything the developer needs.
The functionality provided by the tools in this package by far exceeds
the abilities of the ‘gencat’ program described above for the ‘catgets’
functions.

   There is a program ‘msgfmt’ which is the equivalent program to the
‘gencat’ program.  It generates from the human-readable and -editable
form of the message catalog a binary file which can be used by the
‘gettext’ functions.  But there are several more programs available.

   The ‘xgettext’ program can be used to automatically extract the
translatable messages from a source file.  I.e., the programmer need not
take care of the translations and the list of messages which have to be
translated.  S/He will simply wrap the translatable string in calls to
‘gettext’ et.al and the rest will be done by ‘xgettext’.  This program
has a lot of options which help to customize the output or help to
understand the input better.

   Other programs help to manage the development cycle when new messages
appear in the source files or when a new translation of the messages
appears.  Here it should only be noted that using all the tools in GNU
gettext it is possible to _completely_ automate the handling of message
catalogs.  Besides marking the translatable strings in the source code
and generating the translations the developers do not have anything to
do themselves.