xref: /freebsd/lib/libc/stdio/stdio.3 (revision 5ca8e32633c4ffbbcd6762e5888b6a4ba0708c6c)
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28.Dd March 3, 2009
29.Dt STDIO 3
30.Os
31.Sh NAME
32.Nm stdio
33.Nd standard input/output library functions
34.Sh LIBRARY
35.Lb libc
36.Sh SYNOPSIS
37.In stdio.h
38.Vt FILE *stdin ;
39.Vt FILE *stdout ;
40.Vt FILE *stderr ;
41.Sh DESCRIPTION
42The standard
43.Tn I/O
44library provides a simple and efficient buffered stream
45.Tn I/O
46interface.
47Input and output is mapped into logical data streams
48and the physical
49.Tn I/O
50characteristics are concealed.
51The functions and macros are listed
52below; more information is available from the individual man pages.
53.Pp
54A stream is associated with an external file (which may be a physical
55device) by
56.Em opening
57a file, which may involve creating a new file.
58Creating an
59existing file causes its former contents to be discarded.
60If a file can support positioning requests (such as a disk file, as opposed
61to a terminal) then a
62.Em file position indicator
63associated with the stream is positioned at the start of the file (byte
64zero), unless the file is opened with append mode.
65If append mode
66is used, the position indicator will be placed at the end-of-file.
67The position indicator is maintained by subsequent reads, writes
68and positioning requests.
69All input occurs as if the characters
70were read by successive calls to the
71.Xr fgetc 3
72function; all output takes place as if all characters were
73written by successive calls to the
74.Xr fputc 3
75function.
76.Pp
77A file is disassociated from a stream by
78.Em closing
79the file.
80Output streams are flushed (any unwritten buffer contents are transferred
81to the host environment) before the stream is disassociated from the file.
82The value of a pointer to a
83.Dv FILE
84object is indeterminate (garbage) after a file is closed.
85.Pp
86A file may be subsequently reopened, by the same or another program
87execution, and its contents reclaimed or modified (if it can be repositioned
88at the start).
89If the main function returns to its original caller, or
90the
91.Xr exit 3
92function is called, all open files are closed (hence all output
93streams are flushed) before program termination.
94Other methods
95of program termination may not close files properly and hence
96buffered output may be lost.
97In particular,
98.Xr _exit 2
99does not flush stdio files.
100Neither does an exit due to a signal.
101Buffers are flushed by
102.Xr abort 3
103as required by POSIX, although previous implementations did not.
104.Pp
105This implementation makes no distinction between
106.Dq text
107and
108.Dq binary
109streams.
110In effect, all streams are binary.
111No translation is performed and no extra padding appears on any stream.
112.Pp
113At program startup, three streams are predefined and need not be
114opened explicitly:
115.Bl -bullet -compact -offset indent
116.It
117.Em standard input
118(for reading conventional input),
119.It
120.Em standard output
121(for writing conventional output), and
122.It
123.Em standard error
124(for writing diagnostic output).
125.El
126These streams are abbreviated
127.Dv stdin , stdout
128and
129.Dv stderr .
130Initially, the standard error stream
131is unbuffered; the standard input and output streams are
132fully buffered if and only if the streams do not refer to
133an interactive or
134.Dq terminal
135device, as determined by the
136.Xr isatty 3
137function.
138In fact,
139.Em all
140freshly-opened streams that refer to terminal devices
141default to line buffering, and
142pending output to such streams is written automatically
143whenever such an input stream is read.
144Note that this applies only to
145.Dq "true reads" ;
146if the read request can be satisfied by existing buffered data,
147no automatic flush will occur.
148In these cases,
149or when a large amount of computation is done after printing
150part of a line on an output terminal, it is necessary to
151.Xr fflush 3
152the standard output before going off and computing so that the output
153will appear.
154Alternatively, these defaults may be modified via the
155.Xr setvbuf 3
156function.
157.Pp
158The
159.Nm
160library is a part of the library
161.Nm libc
162and routines are automatically loaded as needed by the C compiler.
163The
164.Tn SYNOPSIS
165sections of the following manual pages indicate which include files
166are to be used, what the compiler declaration for the function
167looks like and which external variables are of interest.
168.Pp
169The following are defined as macros;
170these names may not be re-used
171without first removing their current definitions with
172.Ic #undef :
173.Dv BUFSIZ ,
174.Dv EOF ,
175.Dv FILENAME_MAX ,
176.Dv FOPEN_MAX ,
177.Dv L_ctermid ,
178.Dv L_cuserid ,
179.Dv L_tmpnam ,
180.Dv NULL ,
181.Dv P_tmpdir ,
182.Dv SEEK_CUR ,
183.Dv SEEK_END ,
184.Dv SEEK_SET ,
185.Dv TMP_MAX ,
186.Dv clearerr ,
187.Dv clearerr_unlocked ,
188.Dv feof ,
189.Dv feof_unlocked ,
190.Dv ferror ,
191.Dv ferror_unlocked ,
192.Dv fileno ,
193.Dv fileno_unlocked ,
194.Dv fropen ,
195.Dv fwopen ,
196.Dv getc ,
197.Dv getc_unlocked ,
198.Dv getchar ,
199.Dv getchar_unlocked ,
200.Dv putc ,
201.Dv putc_unlocked ,
202.Dv putchar ,
203.Dv putchar_unlocked ,
204.Dv stderr ,
205.Dv stdin
206and
207.Dv stdout .
208Function versions of the macro functions
209.Dv clearerr ,
210.Dv clearerr_unlocked ,
211.Dv feof ,
212.Dv feof_unlocked ,
213.Dv ferror ,
214.Dv ferror_unlocked ,
215.Dv fileno ,
216.Dv fileno_unlocked ,
217.Dv getc ,
218.Dv getc_unlocked ,
219.Dv getchar ,
220.Dv getchar_unlocked ,
221.Dv putc ,
222.Dv putc_unlocked ,
223.Dv putchar ,
224and
225.Dv putchar_unlocked
226exist and will be used if the macro
227definitions are explicitly removed.
228.Sh SEE ALSO
229.Xr close 2 ,
230.Xr open 2 ,
231.Xr read 2 ,
232.Xr write 2
233.Sh STANDARDS
234The
235.Nm
236library conforms to
237.St -isoC-99 .
238.Sh LIST OF FUNCTIONS
239.Bl -column "Description"
240.It Sy "Function	Description"
241.It "asprintf	formatted output conversion"
242.It "clearerr	check and reset stream status"
243.It "dprintf	formatted output conversion"
244.It "fclose	close a stream"
245.It "fdopen	stream open functions"
246.It "feof	check and reset stream status"
247.It "ferror	check and reset stream status"
248.It "fflush	flush a stream"
249.It "fgetc	get next character or word from input stream"
250.It "fgetln	get a line from a stream"
251.It "fgetpos	reposition a stream"
252.It "fgets	get a line from a stream"
253.It "fgetwc	get next wide character from input stream"
254.It "fgetws	get a line of wide characters from a stream"
255.It "fileno	check and reset stream status"
256.It "fopen	stream open functions"
257.It "fprintf	formatted output conversion"
258.It "fpurge	flush a stream"
259.It "fputc	output a character or word to a stream"
260.It "fputs	output a line to a stream"
261.It "fputwc	output a wide character to a stream"
262.It "fputws	output a line of wide characters to a stream"
263.It "fread	binary stream input/output"
264.It "freopen	stream open functions"
265.It "fropen	open a stream"
266.It "fscanf	input format conversion"
267.It "fseek	reposition a stream"
268.It "fsetpos	reposition a stream"
269.It "ftell	reposition a stream"
270.It "funopen	open a stream"
271.It "fwide	set/get orientation of stream"
272.It "fwopen	open a stream"
273.It "fwprintf	formatted wide character output conversion"
274.It "fwrite	binary stream input/output"
275.It "getc	get next character or word from input stream"
276.It "getchar	get next character or word from input stream"
277.It "getdelim	get a line from a stream"
278.It "getline	get a line from a stream"
279.It "getw	get next character or word from input stream"
280.It "getwc	get next wide character from input stream"
281.It "getwchar	get next wide character from input stream"
282.It "mkdtemp	create unique temporary directory"
283.It "mkstemp	create unique temporary file"
284.It "mktemp	create unique temporary file"
285.It "perror	system error messages"
286.It "printf	formatted output conversion"
287.It "putc	output a character or word to a stream"
288.It "putchar	output a character or word to a stream"
289.It "puts	output a line to a stream"
290.It "putw	output a character or word to a stream"
291.It "putwc	output a wide character to a stream"
292.It "putwchar	output a wide character to a stream"
293.It "remove	remove directory entry"
294.It "rewind	reposition a stream"
295.It "scanf	input format conversion"
296.It "setbuf	stream buffering operations"
297.It "setbuffer	stream buffering operations"
298.It "setlinebuf	stream buffering operations"
299.It "setvbuf	stream buffering operations"
300.It "snprintf	formatted output conversion"
301.It "sprintf	formatted output conversion"
302.It "sscanf	input format conversion"
303.It "strerror	system error messages"
304.It "swprintf	formatted wide character output conversion"
305.It "sys_errlist	system error messages"
306.It "sys_nerr	system error messages"
307.It "tempnam	temporary file routines"
308.It "tmpfile	temporary file routines"
309.It "tmpnam	temporary file routines"
310.It "ungetc	un-get character from input stream"
311.It "ungetwc	un-get wide character from input stream"
312.It "vasprintf	formatted output conversion"
313.It "vdprintf	formatted output conversion"
314.It "vfprintf	formatted output conversion"
315.It "vfscanf	input format conversion"
316.It "vfwprintf	formatted wide character output conversion"
317.It "vprintf	formatted output conversion"
318.It "vscanf	input format conversion"
319.It "vsnprintf	formatted output conversion"
320.It "vsprintf	formatted output conversion"
321.It "vsscanf	input format conversion"
322.It "vswprintf	formatted wide character output conversion"
323.It "vwprintf	formatted wide character output conversion"
324.It "wprintf	formatted wide character output 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 .
330