Important:
This is retired content. This content is outdated and is no longer being maintained. It is provided as a courtesy for individuals who are still using these technologies. This content may contain URLs that were valid when originally published, but now link to sites or pages that no longer exist.
A version of this page is also available for
4/8/2010

This function returns character-type information for the characters in the specified source string. For each character in the string, the function sets one or more bits in the corresponding 16-bit element of the output array. Each bit identifies a given character type, such as whether the character is a letter, a digit, or neither.

Syntax 

BOOL GetStringTypeW(
  DWORD 
dwInfoType, 
  LPCWSTR 
lpSrcStr, 
  int 
cchSrc, 
  LPWORD 
lpCharType 
);

Parameters

dwInfoType

[in] Value that specifies the type of character information the user wants to retrieve. The various types are divided into different levels (see the following Remarks section for a list of the information included in each type). This parameter can specify one of the following character type flags. The following table shows the values this parameter can take.

Value Description

CT_CTYPE1

Retrieve character type information.

CT_CTYPE2

Retrieve bidirectional layout information.

CT_CTYPE3

Retrieve text processing information.
lpSrcStr

[in] Pointer to the string for which character types are requested. If cchSrcis –1, the string is assumed to be null terminated. This must be a Unicode string.

cchSrc

[in] Size, in characters, of the string pointed to by the lpSrcStrparameter. If this count includes a terminating null character, the function returns character type information for the terminating null character. If this value is –1, the string is assumed to be null terminated and the length is calculated automatically.

lpCharType

[out] Pointer to an array of 16-bit values. The length of this array must be large enough to receive one 16-bit value for the number of characters specified in the cchSrcparameter. When the function returns, this array contains one word corresponding to each Unicode character in the source string.

Return Value

Nonzero indicates success. Zero indicates failure. To get extended error information, call the GetLastErrorfunction. Possible values for GetLastErrorinclude the following:

  • ERROR_INVALID_FLAGS

  • ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER

Remarks

The GetStringTypeWfunction is designed for Unicode strings only.

The lpSrcStrand lpCharTypepointers must not be the same. If they are the same, the function fails and GetLastErrorreturns ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER.

The character-type bits are divided into several levels. The information for one level can be retrieved by a single call to this function. Each level is limited to 16 bits of information so that the other mapping routines, which are limited to 16 bits of representation per character, can also return character-type information.

The character types supported by this function include the following.

Ctype 1

These types support ANSI C and POSIX (LC_CTYPE) character-typing functions. A combination of these values is returned in the array pointed to by the lpCharTypeparameter when the dwInfoTypeparameter is set to CT_CTYPE1.

Name Value Description

C1_UPPER

0x0001

Uppercase

C1_LOWER

0x0002

Lowercase

C1_DIGIT

0x0004

Decimal digits

C1_SPACE

0x0008

Space characters

C1_PUNCT

0x0010

Punctuation

C1_CNTRL

0x0020

Control characters

C1_BLANK

0x0040

Blank characters

C1_XDIGIT

0x0080

Hexadecimal digits

C1_ALPHA

0x0100

Any linguistic character: alphabetic, syllabary, or ideographic

The following character types are either constant or computable from basic types and do not need to be supported by this function.

Type Description

Alphanumeric

Alphabetic characters and digits (C1_ALPHA and C1_DIGIT)

Printable

Graphic characters and blanks (all C1_* types except C1_CNTRL)
Ctype 2

These types support proper layout of Unicode text. The direction attributes are assigned so that the bidirectional layout algorithm standardized by Unicode produces accurate results. These types are mutually exclusive. For more information about the use of these attributes, see The Unicode Standard: Worldwide Character Encoding, Volumes 1 and 2,Addison Wesley Publishing Company: 1991, 1992, ISBN 0201567881.

Name Value Description

Strong

C2_LEFTTORIGHT

0x0001

Left to right

C2_RIGHTTOLEFT

0x0002

Right to left

Weak

C2_EUROPENUMBER

0x0003

European number, European digit

C2_EUROPESEPARATOR

0x0004

European numeric separator

C2_EUROPETERMINATOR

0x0005

European numeric terminator

C2_ARABICNUMBER

0x0006

Arabic number

C2_COMMONSEPARATOR

0x0007

Common numeric separator

Neutral

C2_BLOCKSEPARATOR

0x0008

Block separator

C2_SEGMENTSEPARATOR

0x0009

Segment separator

C2_WHITESPACE

0x000A

White space

C2_OTHERNEUTRAL

0x000B

Other neutrals

Not applicable

 

 

C2_NOTAPPLICABLE

0x0000

No implicit directionality (for example, control codes)
Ctype 3

These types are intended to be placeholders for extensions to the POSIX types required for general text processing or for the standard C library functions. A combination of these values is returned when dwInfoTypeis set to CT_CTYPE3.

Name Value Description

C3_NONSPACING

0x0001

Nonspacing mark

C3_DIACRITIC

0x0002

Diacritic nonspacing mark

C3_VOWELMARK

0x0004

Vowel nonspacing mark

C3_SYMBOL

0x0008

Symbol

C3_KATAKANA

0x0010

Katakana character

C3_HIRAGANA

0x0020

Hiragana character

C3_HALFWIDTH

0x0040

Half-width character

C3_FULLWIDTH

0x0080

Full-width character

C3_IDEOGRAPH

0x0100

Ideographic character

C3_KASHIDA

0x0200

Arabic Kashida character

C3_LEXICAL

0x0400

Punctuation which is counted as part of the word (Kashida, hyphen, feminine/masculine ordinal indicators, equal sign, and so forth)

C3_ALPHA

0x8000

All linguistic characters (alphabetic, syllabary, and ideographic)

Not applicable

 

 

C3_NOTAPPLICABLE

0x0000

Not applicable

Requirements

Header winnls.h
Library coredll.lib
Windows Embedded CE Windows CE 1.0 and later
Windows Mobile Windows Mobile Version 5.0 and later

See Also