A directive that is an ordinary character is executed by scanning the next character from the buffer. If the character scanned from the buffer differs from the one comprising the directive, the directive fails, and the differing and subsequent characters remain unscanned. Any other conversion specification is executed by scanning characters until a character matching the next directive is scanned, or until no more characters can be scanned. These characters, except the one matching the next directive, are then compared to the locale values associated with the conversion specifier. If a match is found, values for the appropriate tm structure members are set to values corresponding to the locale information.
Case is ignored when matching items in buf such as month or weekday names.
Otherwise, a null pointer is returned. No errors are defined. This function is expected to be mandatory in the next issue of this specification.