1.\" $NetBSD: stdio.3,v 1.22 2009/07/13 22:31:59 wiz Exp $ 2.\" 3.\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1993 4.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 5.\" 6.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 7.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 8.\" are met: 9.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 10.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 11.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 12.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 13.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 14.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 15.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 16.\" without specific prior written permission. 17.\" 18.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 19.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 20.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 21.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 22.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 23.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 24.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 25.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 26.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 27.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 28.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 29.\" 30.\" @(#)stdio.3 8.7 (Berkeley) 4/19/94 31.\" 32.Dd July 13, 2009 33.Dt STDIO 3 34.Os 35.Sh NAME 36.Nm stdio 37.Nd standard input/output library functions 38.Sh LIBRARY 39.Lb libc 40.Sh SYNOPSIS 41.In stdio.h 42.Fd FILE *stdin; 43.Fd FILE *stdout; 44.Fd FILE *stderr; 45.Sh DESCRIPTION 46The standard 47.Tn I/O 48library provides a simple and efficient buffered stream 49.Tn I/O 50interface. 51Input and output is mapped into logical data streams 52and the physical 53.Tn I/O 54characteristics are concealed. 55The functions and macros are listed below; 56more information is available from the individual man pages. 57.Pp 58A stream is associated with an external file (which may be a physical 59device) by 60.Em opening 61a file, which may involve creating a new file. 62Creating an existing file causes its former contents to be discarded. 63If a file can support positioning requests (such as a disk file, as opposed 64to a terminal) then a 65.Em file position indicator 66associated with the stream is positioned at the start of the file (byte 67zero), unless the file is opened with append mode. 68If append mode 69is used, the position indicator will be placed the end-of-file. 70The position indicator is maintained by subsequent reads, writes 71and positioning requests. 72All input occurs as if the characters 73were read by successive calls to the 74.Xr fgetc 3 75function; all output takes place as if all characters were 76read by successive calls to the 77.Xr fputc 3 78function. 79.Pp 80A file is disassociated from a stream by 81.Em closing 82the file. 83Output streams are flushed (any unwritten buffer contents are transferred 84to the host environment) before the stream is disassociated from the file. 85The value of a pointer to a 86.Dv FILE 87object is indeterminate after a file is closed (garbage). 88.Pp 89A file may be subsequently reopened, by the same or another program 90execution, and its contents reclaimed or modified (if it can be repositioned 91at the start). 92If the main function returns to its original caller, or the 93.Xr exit 3 94function is called, all open files are closed (hence all output 95streams are flushed) before program termination. 96Other methods of program termination, such as 97.Xr abort 3 98do not bother about closing files properly. 99.Pp 100This implementation needs and makes 101no distinction between 102.Dq text 103and 104.Dq binary 105streams. 106In effect, all streams are binary. 107No translation is performed and no extra padding appears on any stream. 108.Pp 109At program startup, three streams are predefined and need not be 110opened explicitly: 111.Bl -bullet -compact -offset indent 112.It 113.Em standard input 114(for reading conventional input), 115.It 116.Em standard output 117(for writing conventional output), and 118.It 119.Em standard error 120(for writing diagnostic output). 121.El 122These streams are abbreviated 123.Em stdin , stdout 124and 125.Em stderr . 126Initially, the standard error stream 127is unbuffered; the standard input and output streams are 128fully buffered if and only if the streams do not refer to 129an interactive or 130.Dq terminal 131device, as determined by the 132.Xr isatty 3 133function. 134In fact, 135.Em all 136freshly-opened streams that refer to terminal devices 137default to line buffering, and 138pending output to such streams is written automatically 139whenever an such an input stream is read. 140Note that this applies only to 141.Dq "true reads" ; 142if the read request can be satisfied by existing buffered data, 143no automatic flush will occur. 144In these cases, 145or when a large amount of computation is done after printing 146part of a line on an output terminal, it is necessary to 147.Xr fflush 3 148the standard output before going off and computing so that the output 149will appear. 150Alternatively, these defaults may be modified via the 151.Xr setvbuf 3 152function. 153.Pp 154The 155.Nm 156library is a part of the library 157.Pa libc.a 158and routines are automatically loaded as needed by compilers such 159as 160.Xr cc 1 . 161The 162.Tn SYNOPSIS 163sections of the following manual pages indicate which include files 164are to be used, what the compiler declaration for the function 165looks like and which external variables are of interest. 166.Pp 167In multi-threaded applications, operations on streams perform implicit 168locking, except for the 169.Fa getc_unlocked , 170.Fa getchar_unlocked , 171.Fa putc_unlocked , 172and 173.Fa putchar_unlocked 174functions. 175Explicit control of stream locking is available through the 176.Fa flockfile , 177.Fa ftrylockfile , 178and 179.Fa funlockfile 180functions . 181.Pp 182The following are defined as macros; these names may not be re-used 183without first removing their current definitions with 184.Dv #undef : 185.Dv BUFSIZ , 186.Dv EOF , 187.Dv FILENAME_MAX , 188.Dv FOPEN_MAX , 189.Dv L_cuserid , 190.Dv L_ctermid , 191.Dv L_tmpnam , 192.Dv NULL , 193.Dv SEEK_END , 194.Dv SEEK_SET , 195.Dv SEE_CUR , 196.Dv TMP_MAX , 197.Fn clearerr , 198.Fn feof , 199.Fn ferror , 200.Fn fileno , 201.Fn freopen , 202.Fn fwopen , 203.Fn getc , 204.Fn getc_unlocked , 205.Fn getchar , 206.Fn getchar_unlocked , 207.Fn putc , 208.Fn putc_unlocked , 209.Fn putchar , 210.Fn putchar_unlocked , 211.Dv stderr , 212.Dv stdin , 213.Dv stdout . 214Function versions of the macro functions 215.Fn feof , 216.Fn ferror , 217.Fn clearerr , 218.Fn fileno , 219.Fn getc , 220.Fn getc_unlocked , 221.Fn getchar , 222.Fn getchar_unlocked , 223.Fn putc , 224.Fn putc_unlocked , 225.Fn putchar , 226and 227.Fn putchar_unlocked 228exist and will be used if the macros definitions are explicitly removed. 229.Sh SEE ALSO 230.Xr close 2 , 231.Xr open 2 , 232.Xr read 2 , 233.Xr write 2 234.Sh STANDARDS 235The 236.Nm 237library conforms to 238.St -ansiC . 239.Sh LIST OF FUNCTIONS 240.Bl -column "putchar_unlocked" "Description" 241.It Sy Function Description 242.It clearerr check and reset stream status 243.It fclose close a stream 244.It fdopen stream open functions 245.It feof check and reset stream status 246.It ferror check and reset stream status 247.It fflush flush a stream 248.It fgetc get next character or word from input stream 249.It fgetln get a line from a stream 250.It fgetpos reposition a stream 251.It fgets get a line from a stream 252.It fgetwc get next wide character from input stream 253.It fileno check and reset stream status 254.It flockfile lock a stream 255.It fopen stream open functions 256.It fprintf formatted output conversion 257.It fpurge flush a stream 258.It fputc output a character or word to a stream 259.It fputs output a line to a stream 260.It fputwc output a wide character to a stream 261.It fread binary stream input/output 262.It freopen stream open functions 263.It fropen open a stream 264.It fscanf input format conversion 265.It fseek reposition a stream 266.It fsetpos reposition a stream 267.It ftell reposition a stream 268.It ftrylockfile lock a stream (non-blocking) 269.It funlockfile unlock a stream 270.It funopen open a stream 271.It fwide set/get orientation of a stream 272.It fwopen open a stream 273.It fwrite binary stream input/output 274.It getc get next character or word from input stream 275.It getc_unlocked get next character or word from input stream 276.It Ta (no implicit locking) 277.It getchar get next character or word from input stream 278.It getchar_unlocked get next character or word from input stream 279.It Ta (no implicit locking) 280.It getdelim get a delimited record from a stream 281.It getline get a line from a stream 282.It gets get a line from a stream 283.It getw get next character or word from input stream 284.It getwc get next wide character from input stream 285.It getwchar get next wide character from input stream 286.It mkstemp create unique temporary file 287.It mktemp create unique temporary file 288.It perror system error messages 289.It printf formatted output conversion 290.It putc output a character or word to a stream 291.It putc_unlocked output a character or word to a stream 292.It Ta (no implicit locking) 293.It putchar output a character or word to a stream 294.It putchar_unlocked output a character or word to a stream 295.It Ta (no implicit locking) 296.It puts output a line to a stream 297.It putw output a character or word to a stream 298.It putwc output a wide character to a stream 299.It putwchar output a wide character to a stream 300.It remove remove directory entry 301.It rewind reposition a stream 302.It scanf input format conversion 303.It setbuf stream buffering operations 304.It setbuffer stream buffering operations 305.It setlinebuf stream buffering operations 306.It setvbuf stream buffering operations 307.It snprintf formatted output conversion 308.It sprintf formatted output conversion 309.It sscanf input format conversion 310.It strerror system error messages 311.It sys_errlist system error messages 312.It sys_nerr system error messages 313.It tempnam temporary file routines 314.It tmpfile temporary file routines 315.It tmpnam temporary file routines 316.It ungetc un-get character from input stream 317.It ungetwc un-get wide character from input stream 318.It vfprintf formatted output conversion 319.It vfscanf input format conversion 320.It vprintf formatted output conversion 321.It vscanf input format conversion 322.It vsnprintf formatted output conversion 323.It vsprintf formatted output conversion 324.It vsscanf input format conversion 325.El 326.Sh BUGS 327The standard buffered functions do not interact well with certain other 328library and system functions, especially 329.Xr vfork 2 330and 331.Xr abort 3 . 332