Multibyte string
A multibyte string is a character sequence in which one logical character may occupy multiple bytes according to an encoding, typically terminated by a null character.
Modern C, Third Edition
A multibyte string is a character sequence in which one logical character may occupy multiple bytes according to the active C locale encoding.
- How it is used
- Uses multibyte strings for extended-character input and output under the active C locale.
- How deep it goes
- Defines byte sequences and null termination, then works through character counting and restartable conversion; it does not specify a universal multibyte encoding.
- Examples
- Shows locale-aware terminal output, a conversion-based length function, and an fgets loop scanning buffered input into UTF-8.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via C library locale and conversion functions to print extended text and scan incomplete multibyte input.
Read how Modern C, Third Edition explains multibyte string →
Modern C
A multibyte string is a null-terminated C string whose character sequences may represent extended characters with multiple bytes.
- How it is used
- Uses multibyte strings to represent and output extended-character text with ordinary C string-output functions.
- How deep it goes
- Defines the byte-sequence model and works through locale-dependent output, character counting, and conversion helpers.
- Examples
- Uses phonetic text, box-drawing separators, and helper implementations for counting and converting characters.
- What you can do after
- Build it from scratch: output extended-character strings and adapt conversion helpers for counting or copying them.
Related concepts
- extended character setused by · An extended character set is a character repertoire containing characters beyond those in the C basic character set.
- stringkind of · A string is a programming-language value representing an ordered sequence of characters or character units as text.
- multibyte characterhas part · A multibyte character is a sequence of bytes interpreted as one character in an extended character encoding.
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