Porting to OS/2: Case #13 iconv()

iconv() is used to convert one charset  to the other charset. OS/2 kLIBC supports iconv() natively using Uni*() APIs of OS/2. By the way, it has some limitations which Uni*() APIs have. That is, kLIBC iconv() does not support charsets which is not supported by Uni*() APIs. For examples, Uni*() APIs does not support UTF charsets except UTF-8. And some extensions are not supported. For examples, //TRANSLIT and //IGNORE.

So if you use kLIBC iconv() with some projects, iconv() may fail due to these. To workaround these, you may use a wrapper function like this.

Colored By Color Scripter™

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

#if defined(__KLIBC__) && !defined(iconv_open) /* kLIBC iconv_open() does not support UTF-16LE and //TRANSLIT */ static iconv_t os2_iconv_open (const char *tocode, const char *fromcode) {     char to[strlen(tocode) + 1];     char from[strlen(fromcode) + 1];     char *p;     strcpy(to, tocode);     strcpy(from, fromcode);     if (!strncmp(to, "UTF-16", 6))     {         strcpy(to, "UCS-2");         memmove(to + 5, to + 6, strlen(to + 6));     }     p = strstr(to, "//");     if (p)         *p = '\0';     if (!strncmp(from, "UTF-16", 6))     {         strcpy(from, "UCS-2");         memmove(from + 5, from + 6, strlen(from + 6));     }     p = strstr(from, "//");     if (p)         *p = '\0';     return iconv_open(to, from); } #define iconv_open(t, f) os2_iconv_open(t, f) #endif

This workaround is used by lame port. It changes UTF-16 to UCS-2 and ignores any extensions. Of course, you should include all the relevant headers.

At line 1, checking if iconv_open was defined is to confirm iconv_open is from libiconv not kLIBC.

For those who want to use full-featured iconv() not a workarounded iconv(), there is GNU libiconv. And it is already ported to OS/2. Visit here.

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/h-search.php?key=libiconv&pushbutton=Search

If you use one of them, the above workaround is not needed. However, you have to modify your settings to use it. Let's assume that it is installed into /usr. Then prepend /usr/include to C_INCLUDE_PATH and CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH. And prepend /usr/lib to LIBRARY_PATH. Then you can use libiconv version of iconv() instead of kLIBC version.