On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 7:42 AM, walter harms <wharms@xxxxxx> wrote: > > > Am 18.02.2016 14:12, schrieb Michael Kerrisk (man-pages): >> Hello Alan, >> >> On 02/03/2016 06:25 PM, Alan Aversa wrote: >>> Hello, >>> >>> The 2015-08-08 strlen man-page is incorrect. Here's a diff: >>> >>> --- a/man3/strlen.3 >>> +++ b/man3/strlen.3 >>> @@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ excluding the terminating null byte (\(aq\\0\(aq). >>> .SH RETURN VALUE >>> The >>> .BR strlen () >>> -function returns the number of bytes in the string >>> +function returns the number of *characters* in the string that >>> precede the terminating null character >> >> I went for a simpler change: s/bytes/characters/ > > > For my understanding this is wrong. 1 character may be represented by 2 or more bytes (utf8). > see this example, the string (test) is 3 characters long and takes 6 bytes space. > > did i miss something ? did the specification of character change ? [...] Either "bytes" or "characters" would be correct. POSIX says "bytes"; ISO C says "characters". See the definition of "character" in C11 3.7.1: > bit representation that fits in a byte On the other hand, 3.7 defines an (abstract) "character" as: > member of a set of elements used for the organization, control, > or representation of data It also defines the terms "multibyte character" (a sequence of one or more bytes representing a member of the extended character set) and "wide character" (a value of type wchar_t). "Bytes" is less ambiguous, but "characters" matches the wording of the ISO C standard (and, in that context, refers to single-byte characters). -- Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson@xxxxxxxxx> -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
