ICONVOPEN(3) Linux Programmer's Manual ICONVOPEN(3)

NAME
       iconvopen - allocate descriptor for character set conversion

SYNOPSIS
       #include 

       iconvt iconvopen(const char *tocode, const char *fromcode);

DESCRIPTION
       The  iconvopen()  function  allocates a conversion descriptor suitable
       for converting byte sequences from character encoding fromcode to char‐
       acter encoding tocode.

       The values permitted for fromcode and tocode and the supported combina‐
       tions are system-dependent.  For the GNU C library, the permitted  val‐
       ues are listed by the iconv list command, and all combinations of the
       listed values are supported.  Furthermore the GNU C library and the GNU
       libiconv library support the following two suffixes:

       //TRANSLIT
              When the string "//TRANSLIT" is appended to tocode, translitera‐
              tion is activated.  This means that when a character  cannot  be
              represented  in the target character set, it can be approximated
              through one or several similarly looking characters.

       //IGNORE
              When the string "//IGNORE" is  appended  to  tocode,  characters
              that  cannot  be represented in the target character set will be
              silently discarded.

       The resulting conversion descriptor can be used with iconv(3) any  num‐
       ber of times.  It remains valid until deallocated using iconvclose(3).

       A  conversion  descriptor  contains a conversion state.  After creation
       using iconvopen(), the state is in the initial state.  Using  iconv(3)
       modifies  the descriptor's conversion state.  (This implies that a con‐
       version descriptor can not be used in multiple threads simultaneously.)
       To bring the state back to the initial state, use iconv(3) with NULL as
       inbuf argument.

RETURN VALUE
       The  iconvopen()  function  returns  a  freshly  allocated  conversion
       descriptor.  In case of error, it sets errno and returns (iconvt) -1.

ERRORS
       The following error can occur, among others:

       EINVAL The  conversion  from fromcode to tocode is not supported by the
              implementation.

VERSIONS
       This function is available in glibc since version 2.1.

CONFORMING TO
       UNIX98, POSIX.1-2001.

SEE ALSO
       iconv(1), iconv(3), iconvclose(3)

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 3.53 of the Linux  man-pages  project.   A
       description  of  the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



GNU                               2008-08-11                     ICONVOPEN(3)