A number of languages use character sets that are larger than the range
of values of type char. Japanese and Chinese are probably the
most familiar examples.
The GNU C library includes support for two mechanisms for dealing with extended character sets: multibyte characters and wide characters. This chapter describes how to use these mechanisms, and the functions for converting between them.
The behavior of the functions in this chapter is affected by the current
locale for character classification--the LC_CTYPE category; see
section Categories of Activities that Locales Affect. This choice of locale selects which multibyte
code is used, and also controls the meanings and characteristics of wide
character codes.
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