STDIO

Section: Standard I/O Functions (3S)
Updated: May 13, 1986
Index Return to Main Contents
 

NAME

stdio - standard buffered input/output package  

SYNOPSIS

#include <stdio.h>

FILE *stdin;
FILE *stdout;
FILE *stderr;  

DESCRIPTION

The functions described in section 3S constitute a user-level buffering scheme. The in-line macros getc and putc(3S) handle characters quickly. The higher level routines gets, fgets, scanf, fscanf, fread, puts, fputs, printf, fprintf, fwrite all use getc and putc; they can be freely intermixed.

A file with associated buffering is called a stream, and is declared to be a pointer to a defined type FILE. Fopen(3S) creates certain descriptive data for a stream and returns a pointer to designate the stream in all further transactions. There are three normally open streams with constant pointers declared in the include file and associated with the standard open files:

stdin
standard input file
stdout
standard output file
stderr
standard error file

A constant `pointer' NULL (0) designates no stream at all.

An integer constant EOF (-1) is returned upon end of file or error by integer functions that deal with streams.

Any routine that uses the standard input/output package must include the header file <stdio.h> of pertinent macro definitions. The functions and constants mentioned in sections labeled 3S are declared in the include file and need no further declaration. The constants, and the following `functions' are implemented as macros; redeclaration of these names is perilous: getc, getchar, putc, putchar, feof, ferror, fileno.  

SEE ALSO

open(2), close(2), read(2), write(2), fread(3S), fseek(3S), f*(3S)  

DIAGNOSTICS

The value EOF is returned uniformly to indicate that a FILE pointer has not been initialized with fopen, input (output) has been attempted on an output (input) stream, or a FILE pointer designates corrupt or otherwise unintelligible FILE data.

For purposes of efficiency, this implementation of the standard library has been changed to line buffer output to a terminal by default and attempts to do this transparently by flushing the output whenever a read(2) from the standard input is necessary. This is almost always transparent, but may cause confusion or malfunctioning of programs which use standard i/o routines but use read(2) themselves to read from the standard input.

In cases where a large amount of computation is done after printing part of a line on an output terminal, it is necessary to fflush(3S) the standard output before going off and computing so that the output will appear.  

BUGS

The standard buffered functions do not interact well with certain other library and system functions, especially vfork and abort.  

LIST OF FUNCTIONS

Name        Appears on Page    Description


clearerr      ferror.3s    stream status inquiries
fclose        fclose.3s    close or flush a stream
fdopen        fopen.3s     open a stream
feof          ferror.3s    stream status inquiries
ferror        ferror.3s    stream status inquiries
fflush        fclose.3s    close or flush a stream
fgetc         getc.3s      get character or word from stream
fgets         gets.3s      get a string from a stream
fileno        ferror.3s    stream status inquiries
fopen         fopen.3s     open a stream
fprintf       printf.3s    formatted output conversion
fputc         putc.3s      put character or word on a stream
fputs         puts.3s      put a string on a stream
fread         fread.3s     buffered binary input/output
freopen       fopen.3s     open a stream
fscanf        scanf.3s     formatted input conversion
fseek         fseek.3s     reposition a stream
ftell         fseek.3s     reposition a stream
fwrite        fread.3s     buffered binary input/output
getc          getc.3s      get character or word from stream
getchar       getc.3s      get character or word from stream
gets          gets.3s      get a string from a stream
getw          getc.3s      get character or word from stream
printf        printf.3s    formatted output conversion
putc          putc.3s      put character or word on a stream
putchar       putc.3s      put character or word on a stream
puts          puts.3s      put a string on a stream
putw          putc.3s      put character or word on a stream
rewind        fseek.3s     reposition a stream
scanf         scanf.3s     formatted input conversion
setbuf        setbuf.3s    assign buffering to a stream
setbuffer     setbuf.3s    assign buffering to a stream
setlinebuf    setbuf.3s    assign buffering to a stream
sprintf       printf.3s    formatted output conversion
sscanf        scanf.3s     formatted input conversion
ungetc        ungetc.3s    push character back into input stream


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
SEE ALSO
DIAGNOSTICS
BUGS
LIST OF FUNCTIONS

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 17:20:41 GMT, March 25, 2025