char16_t

C

Language

Headers

Type support

Program utilities

Variadic function support

Error handling

Dynamic memory management

Date and time utilities

Strings library

Algorithms

Numerics

Input/output support

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Atomic operations (C11)

Thread support (C11)

Technical Specifications

Strings library

Byte strings

Multibyte strings

Wide strings

Null-terminated multibyte strings

Wide/multibyte conversions
mbsinit (C95)
mbtowc mbstowcsmbstowcs_s (C11) btowc (C95) mbrtowc (C95) mbsrtowcsmbsrtowcs_s (C95)(C11) mbrtoc16 (C11) c16rtomb (C11) c32rtomb (C11) mbrtoc32 (C11)	mblen wctombwctomb_s (C11) wcstombswcstombs_s (C11) wctob (C95) wcrtombwcrtomb_s (C95)(C11) wcsrtombswcsrtombs_s (C95)(C11) mbrlen (C95)
Types
mbstate_t (C95)

Defined in header <uchar.h>
typedef uint_least16_t char16_t;		(since C11)
Defined in header <stdint.h>
typedef /*implementation-defined*/ uint_least16_t;		(since C99)

char16_t is an unsigned integer type used for 16-bit wide characters and is the same type as uint_least16_t.

uint_least16_t is the smallest unsigned integer type with width of at least 16 bits.

Notes

On any given platform, the width of type char16_t can be greater than 16 bits, but the actual values stored in an object of type char16_t will always have a width of 16 bits.

Example

Run this code

#include <uchar.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    char16_t wcs[] = u"z"; // or "z\u00df\u6c34\U0001f34c"
    size_t wcs_sz = sizeof wcs / sizeof *wcs;
    printf("%zu UTF-16 code units: [ ", wcs_sz);
    for (size_t n = 0; n < wcs_sz; ++n) printf("%#x ", wcs[n]);
    printf("]\n");
}

Possible output:

6 UTF-16 code units: [ 0x7a 0xdf 0x6c34 0xd83c 0xdf4c 0 ]

References

• C11 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2011):

• 7.28 Unicode utilities <uchar.h> (p: 398)

• 7.20.1.2 Minimum-width integer types (p: 290)

• C99 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1999):

• 7.18.1.2 Minimum-width integer types (p: 256)

See also