The strxfrm() function transforms the string pointed to by s2 and places the resulting string into the array pointed to by s1. The transformation is such that if strcmp(3C) is applied to two transformed strings, it returns a value greater than, equal to or less than 0, corresponding to the result of strcoll(3C) applied to the same two original strings. No more than n bytes are placed into the resulting array pointed to by s1, including the terminating null byte. If n is 0, s1 is permitted to be a null pointer. If copying takes place between objects that overlap, the behavior is undefined.

Upon successful completion, strxfrm() returns the length of the transformed string (not including the terminating null byte). If the value returned is n or more, the contents of the array pointed to by s1 are indeterminate.

On failure, strxfrm() returns (size_t)-1.

The transformation function is such that two transformed strings can be ordered by strcmp(3C) as appropriate to collating sequence information in the program's locale (category LC_COLLATE).

The fact that when n is 0, s1 is permitted to be a null pointer, is useful to determine the size of the s1 array prior to making the transformation.

Because no return value is reserved to indicate an error, an application wishing to check for error situations should set errno to 0, then call strcoll(3C), then check errno and if it is non-zero, assume an error has occurred.

This issue is aligned with the ANSI C standard; this does not affect compatibility with XPG3 applications. Reliable error detection by this function was never guaranteed.

/usr/lib/locale/locale/locale.so.*

LC_COLLATE database for locale

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

localedef(1), setlocale(3C), strcmp(3C), strcoll(3C), wscoll(3C), attributes(5), environ(5), standards(5)

The strxfrm() function can be used safely in a multithreaded application, as long as setlocale(3C) is not being called to change the locale.