isalpha

C

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Technical Specifications

Strings library

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Functions
Character manipulation
isalnum isalpha islower isupper isdigit isxdigit isblank (C99)	iscntrl isgraph isspace isprint ispunct tolower toupper
Conversions to numeric formats
atof atoiatolatoll (C99) strtolstrtoll (C99)	strtoulstrtoull (C99) strtofstrtodstrtold (C99)(C99) strtoimaxstrtoumax (C99)(C99)
String manipulation
strcpystrcpy_s (C11)
strncpystrncpy_s (C11)
strcatstrcat_s (C11)
strncatstrncat_s (C11)
strxfrm
String examination
strlenstrnlen_s (C11) strcmp strncmp strcoll strchr strrchr	strspn strcspn strpbrk strstr strtokstrtok_s (C11)
Memory manipulation
memchr
memcmp
memsetmemset_s (C11)
memcpymemcpy_s (C11)
memmovememmove_s (C11)
Miscellaneous
strerrorstrerror_sstrerrorlen_s (C11)(C11)

Defined in header <ctype.h>
int isalpha( int ch );

Checks if the given character is an alphabetic character, i.e. either an uppercase letter (ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ), or a lowercase letter (abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz).

In locales other than "C", an alphabetic character is a character for which isupper() or islower() returns true or any other character considered alphabetic by the locale. In any case, iscntrl(), isdigit(), ispunct() and isspace() will return false for this character.

The behavior is undefined if the value of ch is not representable as unsigned char or is not equal to EOF.

Parameters

ch

-

character to classify

Return value

Non-zero value if the character is an alphabetic character, zero otherwise.

Example

Demonstrates the use of isalpha() with different locales (OS-specific).

Run this code

#include <ctype.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <locale.h>

int main(void)
{
    unsigned char c = '\xdf'; // German letter  in ISO-8859-1

    printf("isalpha('\\xdf') in default C locale returned%d\n", !!isalpha(c));

    setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "de_DE.iso88591");
    printf("isalpha('\\xdf') in ISO-8859-1 locale returned%d\n", !!isalpha(c));
}

Output:

isalpha('\xdf') in default C locale returned 0
isalpha('\xdf') in ISO-8859-1 locale returned 1

References

• C11 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2011):

• 7.4.1.2 The isalpha function (p: 200-201)

• C99 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1999):

• 7.4.1.2 The isalpha function (p: 181-182)

• C89/C90 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1990):

• 4.3.1.2 The isalpha function

See also

iswalpha (C95)

checks if a wide character is alphabetic (function)

ASCII values			characters	iscntrl iswcntrl	isprint iswprint	isspace iswspace	isblank iswblank	isgraph iswgraph	ispunct iswpunct	isalnum iswalnum	isalpha iswalpha	isupper iswupper	islower iswlower	isdigit iswdigit	isxdigit iswxdigit
decimal	hexadecimal	octal
08	\x0\x8	\0\10	control codes (NUL, etc.)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
9	\x9	\11	tab (\t)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
1013	\xA\xD	\12\15	whitespaces (\n, \v, \f, \r)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
1431	\xE\x1F	\16\37	control codes	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
32	\x20	\40	space	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
3347	\x21\x2F	\41\57	!"#$%&'()*+,-./	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
4857	\x30\x39	\60\71	0123456789	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
5864	\x3A\x40	\72\100	:;<=>?@	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
6570	\x41\x46	\101\106	ABCDEF	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
7190	\x47\x5A	\107\132	GHIJKLMNOP QRSTUVWXYZ	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
9196	\x5B\x60	\133\140	[\]^_`	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
97102	\x61\x66	\141\146	abcdef	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
103122	\x67\x7A	\147\172	ghijklmnop qrstuvwxyz	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
123126	\x7B\x7E	\172\176	{|}~	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
127	\x7F	\177	backspace character (DEL)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0