need_uconvert(3alleg4)

✨ need_uconvert ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the Allegro manual — this one's need_uconvert(3alleg4) and it's genuinely one of the most useful little vibe-checkers in the whole text-encoding situation 💅

💖 NAME 💖

need_uconvert — tells you if a string requires encoding conversion. it's giving "should i bother converting this or nah". part of the Allegro game programming library, obvi 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <allegro.h>

int need_uconvert(const char *s, int type, int newtype);

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea, bestie. you hand this function:

• a pointer to a string (s) 🍓
• a description of what type that string is (type)
• and the type you'd like it to become (newtype) ✨

...and it tells you whether any conversion is required at all. literally just a yes-or-no vibe check before you do the actual work, no cap.

and here's the slay part — no conversion is needed when:

• type and newtype are the same (like, they're already matching, periodt 💅)
• OR one type is ASCII, the other is UTF-8, and the string contains only character values less than 128 👑

also, as a lil convenience shortcut, you can pass the value U_CURRENT as either of the type parameters, and it'll stand in for whatever text encoding format is currently selected. iconic behaviour fr fr.

example time:

if (need_uconvert(text, U_UTF8, U_CURRENT)) {
   /* conversion is required */
}

like. look at her go. 🧚

💜 RETURN VALUE 💜

returns non-zero if any conversion is required, or zero otherwise. simple as that, no drama 🫶

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• set_uformat(3alleg4)
• get_uformat(3alleg4)
• do_uconvert(3alleg4)
• uconvert(3alleg4)

okay that's the whole page, you ate it, go convert some strings bestie 💖✨

Allegro, version 4.4.3, and yeah the page is called need_uconvert(3alleg4) — mwah, that's a wrap 🎀👑