The ISO C standard defines functions to convert strings from a multibyte representation to wide character strings. There are a number of peculiarities:
LC_CTYPE
category of the current locale is used; see
section Categories of Activities that Locales Affect.
Despite these limitations the ISO C functions can very well be used
in many contexts. In graphical user interfaces, for instance, it is not
uncommon to have functions which require text to be displayed in a wide
character string if it is not simple ASCII. The text itself might come
from a file with translations and the user should decide about the
current locale which determines the translation and therefore also the
external encoding used. In such a situation (and many others) the
functions described here are perfect. If more freedom while performing
the conversion is necessary take a look at the iconv
functions
(see section Generic Charset Conversion).
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