xref: /freebsd/lib/libc/stdio/fseek.3 (revision 7899f917b1c0ea178f1d2be0cfb452086d079d23)
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32.Dd April 2, 2022
33.Dt FSEEK 3
34.Os
35.Sh NAME
36.Nm fgetpos ,
37.Nm fseek ,
38.Nm fseeko ,
39.Nm fsetpos ,
40.Nm ftell ,
41.Nm ftello ,
42.Nm rewind
43.Nd reposition a stream
44.Sh LIBRARY
45.Lb libc
46.Sh SYNOPSIS
47.In stdio.h
48.Ft int
49.Fn fseek "FILE *stream" "long offset" "int whence"
50.Ft long
51.Fn ftell "FILE *stream"
52.Ft void
53.Fn rewind "FILE *stream"
54.Ft int
55.Fn fgetpos "FILE * restrict stream" "fpos_t * restrict pos"
56.Ft int
57.Fn fsetpos "FILE *stream" "const fpos_t *pos"
58.In sys/types.h
59.Ft int
60.Fn fseeko "FILE *stream" "off_t offset" "int whence"
61.Ft off_t
62.Fn ftello "FILE *stream"
63.Sh DESCRIPTION
64The
65.Fn fseek
66function sets the file position indicator for the stream pointed
67to by
68.Fa stream .
69The new position, measured in bytes, is obtained by adding
70.Fa offset
71bytes to the position specified by
72.Fa whence .
73If
74.Fa whence
75is set to
76.Dv SEEK_SET ,
77.Dv SEEK_CUR ,
78or
79.Dv SEEK_END ,
80the offset is relative to the
81start of the file, the current position indicator, or end-of-file,
82respectively.
83A successful call to the
84.Fn fseek
85function clears the end-of-file indicator for the stream and undoes
86any effects of the
87.Xr ungetc 3
88and
89.Xr ungetwc 3
90functions on the same stream.
91.Pp
92The
93.Fn ftell
94function
95obtains the current value of the file position indicator for the
96stream pointed to by
97.Fa stream .
98.Pp
99The
100.Fn rewind
101function sets the file position indicator for the stream pointed
102to by
103.Fa stream
104to the beginning of the file.
105It is equivalent to:
106.Pp
107.Dl (void)fseek(stream, 0L, SEEK_SET)
108.Pp
109except that the error indicator for the stream is also cleared
110(see
111.Xr clearerr 3 ) .
112.Pp
113Since
114.Fn rewind
115does not return a value,
116an application wishing to detect errors should clear
117.Va errno ,
118then call
119.Fn rewind ,
120and if
121.Va errno
122is non-zero, assume an error has occurred.
123.Pp
124The
125.Fn fseeko
126function is identical to
127.Fn fseek ,
128except it takes an
129.Fa off_t
130argument
131instead of a
132.Fa long .
133Likewise, the
134.Fn ftello
135function is identical to
136.Fn ftell ,
137except it returns an
138.Fa off_t .
139.Pp
140The
141.Fn fgetpos
142and
143.Fn fsetpos
144functions
145are alternate interfaces for retrieving and setting the current position in
146the file, similar to
147.Fn ftell
148and
149.Fn fseek ,
150except that the current position is stored in an opaque object of
151type
152.Vt fpos_t
153pointed to by
154.Fa pos .
155These functions provide a portable way to seek to offsets larger than
156those that can be represented by a
157.Vt long int .
158They may also store additional state information in the
159.Vt fpos_t
160object to facilitate seeking within files containing multibyte
161characters with state-dependent encodings.
162Although
163.Vt fpos_t
164has traditionally been an integral type,
165applications cannot assume that it is;
166in particular, they must not perform arithmetic on objects
167of this type.
168.Pp
169If the stream is a wide character stream (see
170.Xr fwide 3 ) ,
171the position specified by the combination of
172.Fa offset
173and
174.Fa whence
175must contain the first byte of a multibyte sequence.
176.Sh RETURN VALUES
177The
178.Fn rewind
179function
180returns no value.
181.Pp
182.Rv -std fgetpos fseek fseeko fsetpos
183.Pp
184Upon successful completion,
185.Fn ftell
186and
187.Fn ftello
188return the current offset.
189Otherwise, \-1 is returned and the global variable
190.Va errno
191is set to indicate the error.
192.Sh ERRORS
193.Bl -tag -width Er
194.It Bq Er EBADF
195The
196.Fa stream
197argument
198is not a seekable stream.
199.It Bq Er EINVAL
200The
201.Fa whence
202argument is invalid or
203the resulting file-position
204indicator would be set to a negative value.
205.It Bq Er EOVERFLOW
206The resulting file offset would be a value which
207cannot be represented correctly in an object of type
208.Fa off_t
209for
210.Fn fseeko
211and
212.Fn ftello
213or
214.Fa long
215for
216.Fn fseek
217and
218.Fn ftell .
219.It Bq Er ESPIPE
220The file descriptor underlying stream is associated with a pipe or FIFO
221or file-position indicator value is unspecified
222(see
223.Xr ungetc 3 ) .
224.El
225.Pp
226The functions
227.Fn fgetpos ,
228.Fn fseek ,
229.Fn fseeko ,
230.Fn fsetpos ,
231.Fn ftell ,
232.Fn ftello ,
233and
234.Fn rewind
235may also fail and set
236.Va errno
237for any of the errors specified for the routines
238.Xr fflush 3 ,
239.Xr fstat 2 ,
240.Xr lseek 2 ,
241and
242.Xr malloc 3 .
243.Sh SEE ALSO
244.Xr lseek 2 ,
245.Xr clearerr 3 ,
246.Xr fwide 3 ,
247.Xr ungetc 3 ,
248.Xr ungetwc 3
249.Sh STANDARDS
250The
251.Fn fgetpos ,
252.Fn fsetpos ,
253.Fn fseek ,
254.Fn ftell ,
255and
256.Fn rewind
257functions
258conform to
259.St -isoC .
260.Pp
261The
262.Fn fseeko
263and
264.Fn ftello
265functions conform to
266.St -p1003.1-2001 .
267.Sh HISTORY
268The functions
269.Fn fseek ,
270.Fn ftell ,
271and
272.Fn rewind
273first appeared in
274.At v7 .
275