I attach a patch for https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217059 as requested by Alejandro. -- https://rrt.sc3d.org
From 72b623ee2c32da96a2972a9dce43a554f494c5b8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Reuben Thomas <rrt@xxxxxxxx> Date: Sat, 20 May 2023 12:10:11 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] iconv.3: clarify the behavior when input is untranslatable See https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217059 The man page does not fully reflect the behaviour of glibc's iconv. The man page says: The conversion can stop for four reasons: 1. An invalid multibyte sequence is encountered in the input. In this case, it sets errno to EILSEQ and returns (size_t) -1. *inbuf is left pointing to the beginning of the invalid multibyte sequence. The phrase "An invalid multibyte sequence is encountered in the input" is confusing, because it suggests that it refers only to the validity of the input per se (e.g. a non-UTF-8 sequence in input purporting to be UTF-8). However, according to the original author of the man page, Bruno Haible[1], it also refers to input that cannot be translated to the desired output encoding; and indeed, glibc's iconv returns EILSEQ when the input cannot be translated, even though it is valid. This patch adds language that reflects the actual behavior. [1] https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=29913#c4 Signed-off-by: Reuben Thomas <rrt@xxxxxxxx> Suggested-by: Alejandro Colomar <alx@xxxxxxxxxx> --- man3/iconv.3 | 3 ++- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/man3/iconv.3 b/man3/iconv.3 index 66f59b8c3..e8694ca12 100644 --- a/man3/iconv.3 +++ b/man3/iconv.3 @@ -73,7 +73,8 @@ to an update to the conversion state without producing any output bytes; such input is called a \fIshift sequence\fP. The conversion can stop for four reasons: .IP \[bu] 3 -An invalid multibyte sequence is encountered in the input. +An multibyte sequence is encountered in the input which is either invalid, +or cannot be translated to the character encoding of the output. In this case, it sets \fIerrno\fP to \fBEILSEQ\fP and returns .IR (size_t)\ \-1 . -- 2.34.1
