iconv_open(3)              Library Functions Manual              iconv_open(3)

NAME
       iconv_open - allocate descriptor for character set conversion

LIBRARY
       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
       #include <iconv.h>

       iconv_t iconv_open(const char *tocode, const char *fromcode);

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

       The values permitted for fromcode and tocode and the supported
       combinations are system-dependent.  For the GNU C library, the
       permitted values 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,
              transliteration 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
       number of times.  It remains valid until deallocated using
       iconv_close(3).

       A conversion descriptor contains a conversion state.  After creation
       using iconv_open(), the state is in the initial state.  Using iconv(3)
       modifies the descriptor's conversion state.  To bring the state back to
       the initial state, use iconv(3) with NULL as inbuf argument.

RETURN VALUE
       On success, iconv_open() returns a freshly allocated conversion
       descriptor.  On failure, it returns (iconv_t) -1 and sets errno to
       indicate the error.

ERRORS
       The following error can occur, among others:

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

ATTRIBUTES
       For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
       attributes(7).

       +-------------------------------------+---------------+----------------+
       |Interface                            | Attribute     | Value          |
       +-------------------------------------+---------------+----------------+
       |iconv_open ()                        | Thread safety | MT-Safe locale |
       +-------------------------------------+---------------+----------------+
STANDARDS
       POSIX.1-2008.

HISTORY
       glibc 2.1.  POSIX.1-2001, SUSv2.

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

Linux man-pages 6.7               2023-10-31                     iconv_open(3)