iscntrl

C

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Technical Specifications

Strings library

Byte strings

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Wide strings

Null-terminated byte strings

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 iscntrl( int ch );

Checks if the given character is a control character, i.e. codes 0x00-0x1F and 0x7F.

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

Parameters

ch

-

character to classify

Return value

Non-zero value if the character is a control character, zero otherwise.

Example

Run this code

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

int main(void)
{
    unsigned char c = '\x94'; // the control code CCH in ISO-8859-1
    printf("In the default C locale, \\x94 is%sa control character\n",
           iscntrl(c) ? "" : "not " );
    setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_GB.iso88591");
    printf("In ISO-8859-1 locale, \\x94 is%sa control character\n",
           iscntrl(c) ? "" : "not " );
}

Output:

In the default C locale, \x94 is not a control character
In ISO-8859-1 locale, \x94 is a control character

References

• C11 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2011):

• 7.4.1.4 The iscntrl function (p: 201)

• C99 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1999):

• 7.4.1.4 The iscntrl function (p: 182)

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

• 4.3.1.3 The iscntrl function

See also

iswcntrl (C95)

checks if a wide character is a control character (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