ctype(3) - NetBSD Manual Pages

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CTYPE(3)                NetBSD Library Functions Manual               CTYPE(3)


NAME

     ctype -- character classification and mapping functions


LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)


SYNOPSIS

     #include <ctype.h>

     isalpha(int c);

     isupper(int c);

     islower(int c);

     isdigit(int c);

     isxdigit(int c);

     isalnum(int c);

     isspace(int c);

     ispunct(int c);

     isprint(int c);

     isgraph(int c);

     iscntrl(int c);

     isblank(int c);

     toupper(int c);

     tolower(int c);


DESCRIPTION

     The above functions perform character tests and conversions on the inte-
     ger c.

     See the specific manual pages for information about the test or conver-
     sion performed by each function.


EXAMPLES

     To print an upper-case version of a string to stdout, the following code
     can be used:

           const char *s = "xyz";

           while (*s != '\0') {
               putchar(toupper((unsigned char)*s));
               s++;
           }


SEE ALSO

     isalnum(3), isalpha(3), isblank(3), iscntrl(3), isdigit(3), isgraph(3),
     islower(3), isprint(3), ispunct(3), isspace(3), isupper(3), isxdigit(3),
     tolower(3), toupper(3), ascii(7)


STANDARDS

     These functions, with the exception of isblank(), conform to ANSI
     X3.159-1989 (``ANSI C89'').  All described functions, including
     isblank(), also conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'').


CAVEATS

     The argument of these functions is of type int, but only a very
     restricted subset of values are actually valid.  The argument must either
     be the value of the macro EOF (which has a negative value), or must be a
     non-negative value within the range representable as unsigned char.
     Passing invalid values leads to undefined behavior.

     Values of type int that were returned by getc(3), fgetc(3), and similar
     functions or macros are already in the correct range, and may be safely
     passed to these ctype functions without any casts.

     Values of type char or signed char must first be cast to unsigned char,
     to ensure that the values are within the correct range.  Casting a nega-
     tive-valued char or signed char directly to int will produce a negative-
     valued int, which will be outside the range of allowed values (unless it
     happens to be equal to EOF, but even that would not give the desired
     result).

     Because the bugs may manifest as silent misbehavior or as crashes only
     when fed input outside the US-ASCII range, the NetBSD implementation of
     the ctype functions is designed to elicit a compiler warning for code
     that passes inputs of type char in order to flag code that may pass nega-
     tive values at runtime that would lead to undefined behavior:

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

           int
           main(int argc, char **argv)
           {

                   if (argc < 2)
                           return 1;
                   setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
                   printf("%d %d\n", *argv[1], isprint(*argv[1]));
                   printf("%d %d\n", (int)(unsigned char)*argv[1],
                       isprint((unsigned char)*argv[1]));
                   return 0;
           }

     When compiling this program, GCC reports a warning for the line that
     passes char.  At runtime, you may get nonsense answers for some inputs
     without the cast -- if you're lucky and it doesn't crash:

           % gcc -Wall -o test test.c
           test.c: In function 'main':
           test.c:12:2: warning: array subscript has type 'char'
           % LC_CTYPE=C ./test $(printf '\270')
           -72 5
           184 0
           % LC_CTYPE=C ./test $(printf '\377')
           -1 0
           255 0
           % LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.ISO8859-1 ./test $(printf '\377')
           -1 0
           255 2

     Some implementations of libc, such as glibc as of 2018, attempt to avoid
     the worst of the undefined behavior by defining the functions to work for
     all integer inputs representable by either unsigned char or char, and
     suppress the warning.  However, this is not an excuse for avoiding con-
     version to unsigned char: if EOF coincides with any such value, as it
     does when it is -1 on platforms with signed char, programs that pass char
     will still necessarily confuse the classification and mapping of EOF with
     the classification and mapping of some non-EOF inputs.

NetBSD 9.3                     January 15, 2019                     NetBSD 9.3