Issue 0213: Lacuna in mbrtowc

This issue has been automatically converted from the original issue lists and some formatting may not have been preserved.

Authors: Clive Feather
Date: 1999-10-20
Reference document: ISO/IEC WG14 N900
Submitted against: C99
Status: Fixed
Fixed in: C99 TC1
Converted from: summary-c99.htm, dr_213.htm

Summary

The description of the result of mbrtowc uses the term "positive" to distinguish one case from others. Unfortunately some of the other cases are also positive, because they are negative numbers cast to the (unsigned) type size_t.

The actual return value in this case is always between 1 and the value of the parameter n (inclusive): positive if the next n or fewer bytes complete a valid multibyte character (which is the value stored); the value returned is the number of bytes that complete the multibyte character.

Comment from WG14 on 2000-11-02:

Technical Corrigendum

In 7.24.6.3.2 paragraph 4, change the label of the case "positive" to "between 1 and n inclusive".