toascii(3)

✨ toascii(3) ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to the toascii page — it's in the Library Functions Manual, and ngl, this one is a little antique 🫖

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💖 NAME 💖

toascii — convert character to ASCII

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🌸 LIBRARY 🌸

Standard C library (libc, -lc)

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

#include <ctype.h>

[[deprecated]] int toascii(int c);

🦋 Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)): 🦋

toascii():

_XOPEN_SOURCE
    || /* glibc >= 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
    || /* glibc <= 2.19: */ _SVID_SOURCE || _BSD_SOURCE

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

toascii() takes your c and converts it into a 7-bit unsigned char value that fits into the ASCII character set. how, you ask? it literally just clears the high-order bits. that's the whole trick. clearing. the. high. order. bits. 💀

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🌈 RETURN VALUE 🌈

the value it hands back is the converted character. that's it, that's the return. periodt.

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⭐ ATTRIBUTES ⭐

for the full tea on what all these terms even mean, go peek at attributes(7) 👑

• Interface: toascii()
• Attribute: Thread safety
• Value: MT-Safe

(so yes bestie, she is MT-Safe — go off 💚)

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👑 STANDARDS 👑

POSIX.1-2008.

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🕰️ HISTORY 🕰️

SVr4, BSD, POSIX.1-2001. it got marked obsolete in POSIX.1-2008, and the reason is lowkey important: it cannot be used portably in a localized application. so… keep that in mind 🙈

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💀 BUGS 💀

Many people will be unhappy if you use this function. This function will convert accented letters into random characters.

yeah. that's the actual documented bug. many people will be unhappy 😭 and your accented letters? turned into random characters. not the vibe check anyone asked for.

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🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

isascii(3), tolower(3), toupper(3)

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and that's a wrap, bestie — this page came from Linux man-pages 6.20 and got its glow-up dated 2026-02-08 🎀 slay, go read the source instead if you can fr fr 💖✨