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.
(This implies that a conversion
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
iconv_open()
function returns a freshly allocated conversion
descriptor.
In case of error, it sets errno and returns
(iconv_t) -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.
This page is part of release 3.14 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/.
