.\" $OpenBSD: stdio.3,v 1.31 2014/07/03 06:08:06 jmc Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1993 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .Dd $Mdocdate: July 3 2014 $ .Dt STDIO 3 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm stdio .Nd standard input/output library functions .Sh SYNOPSIS .In stdio.h .Pp .Fd FILE *stdin; .Fd FILE *stdout; .Fd FILE *stderr; .Sh DESCRIPTION The standard I/O library provides a simple and efficient buffered stream I/O interface. Input and output is mapped into logical data streams and the physical I/O characteristics are concealed. The functions and macros are listed below; more information is available from the individual man pages. .Pp A stream is associated with an external file (which may be a physical device) by .Dq opening a file, which may involve creating a new file. Creating an existing file causes its former contents to be discarded. If a file can support positioning requests (such as a disk file, as opposed to a terminal) then a .Dq file position indicator associated with the stream is positioned at the start of the file (byte zero), unless the file is opened with append mode. If append mode is used, the position indicator will be placed at the end-of-file. The position indicator is maintained by subsequent reads, writes, and positioning requests. All input occurs as if the characters were read by successive calls to the .Xr fgetc 3 function; all output takes place as if all characters were written by successive calls to the .Xr fputc 3 function. .Pp A file is disassociated from a stream by .Dq closing it. Output streams are flushed (any unwritten buffer contents are transferred to the host environment) before the stream is disassociated from the file. The value of a pointer to a .Dv FILE object is indeterminate (garbage) after a file is closed. .Pp A file may be subsequently reopened, by the same or another program execution, and its contents reclaimed or modified (if it can be repositioned at the start). If the main function returns to its original caller, or the .Xr exit 3 function is called, all open files are closed (hence all output streams are flushed) before program termination. Other methods of program termination may not close files properly and hence buffered output may be lost. In particular, .Xr _exit 2 does not flush .Nm files. Neither does an exit due to a signal. Buffers are flushed by .Xr abort 3 , as required by POSIX, although in previous implementations they were not. .Pp This implementation needs and makes no distinction between .Dq text and .Dq binary streams. In effect, all streams are binary. No translation is performed and no extra padding appears on any stream. .Pp At program startup, three streams are predefined and need not be opened explicitly: .Pp .Bl -bullet -compact -offset indent .It .Em standard input (for reading conventional input), .It .Em standard output (for writing conventional output), and .It .Em standard error (for writing diagnostic output). .El .Pp These streams are abbreviated .Em stdin , .Em stdout , and .Em stderr . Initially, the standard error stream is unbuffered; the standard input and output streams are fully buffered if and only if the streams do not refer to an interactive or .Dq terminal device, as determined by the .Xr isatty 3 function. In fact, .Em all freshly opened streams that refer to terminal devices default to line buffering, and pending output to such streams is written automatically whenever such an input stream is read. Note that this applies only to .Dq "true reads" ; if the read request can be satisfied by existing buffered data, no automatic flush will occur. In these cases, or when a large amount of computation is done after printing part of a line on an output terminal, it is necessary to .Xr fflush 3 the standard output so that the output will appear immediately. Alternatively, these defaults may be modified via the .Xr setvbuf 3 function. .Pp The .Nm stdio library is a part of the library libc and routines are automatically loaded as needed by the compiler. The SYNOPSIS sections of the following manual pages indicate which include files are to be used, what the compiler declaration for the function looks like, and which external variables are of interest. .Pp The following are defined as macros; these names may not be re-used without first removing their current definitions with .Dv #undef : .Dv BUFSIZ , .Dv EOF , .Dv FILENAME_MAX , .Dv FOPEN_MAX , .Dv L_ctermid , .Dv L_tmpnam , .Dv NULL , .Dv SEEK_END , .Dv SEEK_SET , .Dv SEEK_CUR , .Dv TMP_MAX , .Dv clearerr , .Dv feof , .Dv ferror , .Dv fileno , .Dv freopen , .Dv fwopen , .Dv getc , .Dv getchar , .Dv putc , .Dv putchar , .Dv stderr , .Dv stdin , .Dv stdout . Function versions of the macro functions .Xr feof 3 , .Xr ferror 3 , .Xr clearerr 3 , .Xr fileno 3 , .Xr getc 3 , .Xr getchar 3 , .Xr putc 3 , and .Xr putchar 3 exist and will be used if the macro definitions are explicitly removed. .Sh LIST OF FUNCTIONS .Bl -column "sys_errlist" "Description" .It Sy Function Ta Sy Description .It asprintf Ta "formatted output conversion with allocation" .It clearerr Ta "check and reset stream status" .It dprintf Ta "formatted output conversion" .It fclose Ta "close a stream" .It fdopen Ta "stream open functions" .It feof Ta "check and reset stream status" .It ferror Ta "check and reset stream status" .It fflush Ta "flush a stream" .It fgetc Ta "get next character or word from input stream" .It fgetln Ta "get a line from a stream" .It fgetpos Ta "reposition a stream" .It fgets Ta "get a line from a stream" .It fgetwc Ta "get next wide character from input stream" .It fgetws Ta "get a line of wide characters from a stream" .It fileno Ta "get a stream's underlying file descriptor" .It fopen Ta "stream open functions" .It fprintf Ta "formatted output conversion" .It fpurge Ta "flush a stream" .It fputc Ta "output a character or word to a stream" .It fputs Ta "output a line to a stream" .It fputwc Ta "output a wide character to a stream" .It fputws Ta "output a line of wide characters to a stream" .It fread Ta "binary stream input/output" .It freopen Ta "stream open functions" .It fropen Ta "open a stream" .It fscanf Ta "input format conversion" .It fseek Ta "reposition a stream" .It fsetpos Ta "reposition a stream" .It ftell Ta "reposition a stream" .It funopen Ta "open a stream" .It fwide Ta "set/get orientation of stream" .It fwopen Ta "open a stream" .It fwprintf Ta "formatted wide character output conversion" .It fwrite Ta "binary stream input/output" .It getc Ta "get next character or word from input stream" .It getchar Ta "get next character or word from input stream" .It getdelim Ta "read a delimited record from a stream" .It getline Ta "read a delimited record from a stream" .It getw Ta "get next character or word from input stream" .It getwc Ta "get next wide character from input stream" .It getwchar Ta "get next wide character from input stream" .It mkdtemp Ta "create unique temporary directory" .It mkstemp Ta "create unique temporary file" .It mktemp Ta "create unique temporary file" .It perror Ta "system error messages" .It printf Ta "formatted output conversion" .It putc Ta "output a character or word to a stream" .It putchar Ta "output a character or word to a stream" .It puts Ta "output a line to a stream" .It putw Ta "output a character or word to a stream" .It putwc Ta "output a wide character to a stream" .It putwchar Ta "output a wide character to a stream" .It remove Ta "remove directory entry" .It rewind Ta "reposition a stream" .It scanf Ta "input format conversion" .It setbuf Ta "stream buffering operations" .It setbuffer Ta "stream buffering operations" .It setlinebuf Ta "stream buffering operations" .It setvbuf Ta "stream buffering operations" .It snprintf Ta "formatted output conversion" .It sprintf Ta "formatted output conversion" .It sscanf Ta "input format conversion" .It strerror Ta "system error messages" .It swprintf Ta "formatted wide character output conversion" .It sys_errlist Ta "system error messages" .It sys_nerr Ta "system error messages" .It tempnam Ta "temporary file routines" .It tmpfile Ta "temporary file routines" .It tmpnam Ta "temporary file routines" .It ungetc Ta "un-get character from input stream" .It ungetwc Ta "un-get wide character from input stream" .It vasprintf Ta "formatted output conversion with allocation" .It vdprintf Ta "formatted output conversion" .It vfprintf Ta "formatted output conversion" .It vfscanf Ta "input format conversion" .It vfwprintf Ta "formatted wide character output conversion" .It vprintf Ta "formatted output conversion" .It vscanf Ta "input format conversion" .It vsnprintf Ta "formatted output conversion" .It vsprintf Ta "formatted output conversion" .It vsscanf Ta "input format conversion" .It vswprintf Ta "formatted wide character output conversion" .It vwprintf Ta "formatted wide character output conversion" .It wprintf Ta "formatted wide character output conversion" .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr close 2 , .Xr open 2 , .Xr read 2 , .Xr write 2 .Sh STANDARDS The .Nm stdio library conforms to .St -isoC-99 . .Sh BUGS The standard buffered functions do not interact well with certain other library and system functions, especially .Xr vfork 2 and .Xr abort 3 .