.\" $NetBSD: stdio.3,v 1.17 2003/01/28 20:26:04 kleink 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. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software .\" must display the following acknowledgement: .\" This product includes software developed by the University of .\" California, Berkeley and its contributors. .\" 4. 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. .\" .\" @(#)stdio.3 8.7 (Berkeley) 4/19/94 .\" .Dd January 28, 2003 .Dt STDIO 3 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm stdio .Nd standard input/output library functions .Sh LIBRARY .Lb libc .Sh SYNOPSIS .Fd #include \*[Lt]stdio.h\*[Gt] .Fd FILE *stdin; .Fd FILE *stdout; .Fd FILE *stderr; .Sh DESCRIPTION The standard .Tn I/O library provides a simple and efficient buffered stream .Tn I/O interface. Input and output is mapped into logical data streams and the physical .Tn 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 .Em 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 .Em 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 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 read by successive calls to the .Xr fputc 3 function. .Pp A file is disassociated from a stream by .Em closing the file. 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 after a file is closed (garbage). .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, such as .Xr abort 3 do not bother about closing files properly. .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: .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 These streams are abbreviated .Em stdin , 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 an 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 before going off and computing so that the output will appear. Alternatively, these defaults may be modified via the .Xr setvbuf 3 function. .Pp The .Nm library is a part of the library .Pa libc.a and routines are automatically loaded as needed by compilers such as .Xr cc 1 . The .Tn 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 In multi-threaded applications, operations on streams perform implicit locking, except for the .Fa getc_unlocked , .Fa getchar_unlocked , .Fa putc_unlocked , and .Fa putchar_unlocked functions. Explicit control of stream locking is available through the .Fa flockfile , .Fa ftrylockfile , and .Fa funlockfile functions . .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_cuserid , .Dv L_ctermid , .Dv L_tmpnam , .Dv NULL , .Dv SEEK_END , .Dv SEEK_SET , .Dv SEE_CUR , .Dv TMP_MAX , .Fn clearerr , .Fn feof , .Fn ferror , .Fn fileno , .Fn freopen , .Fn fwopen , .Fn getc , .Fn getc_unlocked , .Fn getchar , .Fn getchar_unlocked , .Fn putc , .Fn putc_unlocked , .Fn putchar , .Fn putchar_unlocked , .Dv stderr , .Dv stdin , .Dv stdout . Function versions of the macro functions .Fn feof , .Fn ferror , .Fn clearerr , .Fn fileno , .Fn getc , .Fn getc_unlocked , .Fn getchar , .Fn getchar_unlocked , .Fn putc , .Fn putc_unlocked , .Fn putchar , and .Fn putchar_unlocked exist and will be used if the macros definitions are explicitly removed. .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr close 2 , .Xr open 2 , .Xr read 2 , .Xr write 2 .Sh STANDARDS The .Nm library conforms to .St -ansiC . .Sh LIST OF FUNCTIONS .Bl -column "Functionxxxxxxxx" "Description" .Sy Function Description clearerr check and reset stream status fclose close a stream fdopen stream open functions feof check and reset stream status ferror check and reset stream status fflush flush a stream fgetc get next character or word from input stream fgetln get a line from a stream fgetpos reposition a stream fgets get a line from a stream fgetwc get next wide character from input stream fileno check and reset stream status flockfile lock a stream fopen stream open functions fprintf formatted output conversion fpurge flush a stream fputc output a character or word to a stream fputs output a line to a stream fputwc output a wide character to a stream fread binary stream input/output freopen stream open functions fropen open a stream fscanf input format conversion fseek reposition a stream fsetpos reposition a stream ftell reposition a stream ftrylockfile lock a stream (non-blocking) funlockfile unlock a stream funopen open a stream fwide set/get orientation of a stream fwopen open a stream fwrite binary stream input/output getc get next character or word from input stream getc_unlocked get next character or word from input stream (no implicit locking) getchar get next character or word from input stream getchar_unlocked get next character or word from input stream (no implicit locking) gets get a line from a stream getw get next character or word from input stream getwc get next wide character from input stream getwchar get next wide character from input stream mkstemp create unique temporary file mktemp create unique temporary file perror system error messages printf formatted output conversion putc output a character or word to a stream putc_unlocked output a character or word to a stream (no implicit locking) putchar output a character or word to a stream putchar_unlocked output a character or word to a stream (no implicit locking) puts output a line to a stream putw output a character or word to a stream putwc output a wide character to a stream putwchar output a wide character to a stream remove remove directory entry rewind reposition a stream scanf input format conversion setbuf stream buffering operations setbuffer stream buffering operations setlinebuf stream buffering operations setvbuf stream buffering operations snprintf formatted output conversion sprintf formatted output conversion sscanf input format conversion strerror system error messages sys_errlist system error messages sys_nerr system error messages tempnam temporary file routines tmpfile temporary file routines tmpnam temporary file routines ungetc un-get character from input stream ungetwc un-get wide character from input stream vfprintf formatted output conversion vfscanf input format conversion vprintf formatted output conversion vscanf input format conversion vsnprintf formatted output conversion vsprintf formatted output conversion vsscanf input format conversion .El .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 .