C Reference function mblen()

The function mlen() of the library stdlib.h is used to get the length of a multi-byte character.

Usage of mblen():

int mblen ( const char * pmb, size_t max );

The pmb (pointer multibyte character) pointer is pointing to the multi-byte value where you want to know the size of. It will only examine at most max bytes.

Parameters:

The pmb pointer is used to point to the first byte of a multi-byte character. The max parameter is the maximum number of bytes to be checked.

Return value:

If pmb is NULL, the mblen() function returns a non-zero if the active locale allows mixed-byte strings.
The function initializes the state variable. Otherwise a zero is returned.

If string is not NULL, mblen() returns a zero if pmb points to the null character, the number of bytes comprising the multibyte character or -1 if pmb does not point to a valid multi-byte character.

Source code example of mblen():

The example uses the functions mblen() and mbtowc().
It will convert a multi-byte character to single wide character.

	#include<stdio.h>
	#include<stdlib.h>

	int length, temp;
	char strdata [6] = "m";
	wchar_t my_array[6];

	int main(void)
	{
		/* initialize internal state variable */
		length = mblen(NULL, MB_CUR_MAX);

		/* set strdata to point to a multibyte character  */
		length = mblen(strdata, MB_CUR_MAX);

		temp = mbtowc(arr,strdata,length);
		my_array[1] = L'\0';
		printf("wide character strdata: %ls\n", my_array);
	}