.\" Copyright (c) Bruno Haible <haible@clisp.cons.org>
.\"
.\" This is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or
.\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
.\" published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
.\" the License, or (at your option) any later version.
.\"
.\" References consulted:
.\"   GNU glibc-2 source code and manual
.\"   Dinkumware C library reference http://www.dinkumware.com/
.\"   OpenGroup's Single Unix specification http://www.UNIX-systems.org/online.html
.\"   ISO/IEC 9899:1999
.\"
.TH MBSINIT 3  "July 25, 1999" "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
mbsinit \- test for initial shift state
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <wchar.h>
.sp
.BI "int mbsinit (const mbstate_t *" ps );
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
Character conversion between the multibyte representation and the wide
character representation uses conversion state, of type \fBmbstate_t\fP.
Conversion of a string uses a finite-state machine; when it is interrupted
after the complete conversion of a number of characters, it may need to
save a state for processing the remaining characters. Such a conversion
state is needed for the sake of encodings such as ISO-2022 and SJIS.
.PP
The initial state is the state at the beginning of conversion of a string.
There are two kinds of state: The one used by multibyte to wide character
conversion functions, such as \fBmbsrtowcs\fP, and the one used by wide
character to multibyte conversion functions, such as \fBwcsrtombs\fP,
but they both fit in a \fBmbstate_t\fP, and they both have the same
representation for an initial state.
.PP
For 8-bit or UTF-8 encodings, all states are equivalent to the initial state.
.PP
One possible way to create an mbstate_t in initial state is to set it to zero:
.nf
  mbstate_t state;
  memset(&state,0,sizeof(mbstate_t));
.fi
On Linux, the following works as well, but might generate compiler warnings:
.nf
  mbstate_t state = { 0 };
.fi
.PP
The function \fBmbsinit\fP tests whether \fI*ps\fP corresponds to an
initial state.
.SH "RETURN VALUE"
\fBmbsinit\fP returns non-zero if \fI*ps\fP is an initial state, or if
\fIps\fP is a null pointer. Otherwise it returns 0.
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
ISO/ANSI C, UNIX98
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR mbsrtowcs "(3), " wcsrtombs (3)
.SH NOTES
The behaviour of \fBmbsinit\fP depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the
current locale.