Multibyte Character Functions

Locales and Multibyte Character Sequences

The processing of multibyte character sequences is dependent on the current locale. (See Localization for a full discussion of locales.) For example, some locales support DBCS sequences and some do not. The standard locales "S370" and "POSIX" do not support DBCS sequences. The default locale, "" , may or may not support DBCS sequences, depending on the values of locale-related environment variables. Of the three locales supplied by the SAS/C Library, "DBCS" and "DBEX" support DBCS sequences, while "SAMP" does not.

The macro MB_CUR_MAX , defined in <stdlib.h> , defines the longest sequence of bytes needed to represent a single multibyte character in the current locale. The macro MB_LEN_MAX , on the other hand, is not locale-dependent and defines the longest multibyte character permitted across all locales.

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