- * This function returns the number of columns occupied by the character
- * pointed to by the variable start. The pointer is updated to point at
- * the next character. If it was not valid UTF-8, the pointer is set to NULL.
+ * Pick one ucs character starting from the location *start points at,
+ * and return it, while updating the *start pointer to point at the
+ * end of that character.
+ *
+ * If the string was not a valid UTF-8, *start pointer is set to NULL
+ * and the return value is undefined.