stdio/stdio.3

   1 .\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1993
   2 .\"     The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
   3 .\"
   4 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
   5 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
   6 .\" are met:
   7 .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
   8 .\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
   9 .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
  10 .\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
  11 .\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  12 .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
  13 .\"    must display the following acknowledgement:
  14 .\"     This product includes software developed by the University of
  15 .\"     California, Berkeley and its contributors.
  16 .\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
  17 .\"    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
  18 .\"    without specific prior written permission.
  19 .\"
  20 .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
  21 .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
  22 .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
  23 .\" ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
  24 .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
  25 .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
  26 .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
  27 .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
  28 .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
  29 .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
  30 .\" SUCH DAMAGE.
  31 .\"
  32 .\"     @(#)stdio.3     8.7 (Berkeley) 4/19/94
  33 .\" $FreeBSD: src/lib/libc/stdio/stdio.3,v 1.18 2001/10/01 16:08:59 ru Exp $
  34 .\"
  35 .Dd April 19, 1994
  36 .Dt STDIO 3
  37 .Os
  38 .Sh NAME
  39 .Nm stdio
  40 .Nd standard input/output library functions
  41 .Sh LIBRARY
  42 .Lb libc
  43 .Sh SYNOPSIS
  44 .In stdio.h
  45 .Vt FILE *stdin ;
  46 .Vt FILE *stdout ;
  47 .Vt FILE *stderr ;
  48 .Sh DESCRIPTION
  49 The standard
  50 .Tn I/O
  51 library provides a simple and efficient buffered stream
  52 .Tn I/O
  53 interface.
  54 Input and output is mapped into logical data streams
  55 and the physical
  56 .Tn I/O
  57 characteristics are concealed.
  58 The functions and macros are listed
  59 below; more information is available from the individual man pages.
  60 .Pp
  61 A stream is associated with an external file (which may be a physical
  62 device) by
  63 .Em opening
  64 a file, which may involve creating a new file.
  65 Creating an
  66 existing file causes its former contents to be discarded.
  67 If a file can support positioning requests (such as a disk file, as opposed
  68 to a terminal) then a
  69 .Em file position indicator
  70 associated with the stream is positioned at the start of the file (byte
  71 zero), unless the file is opened with append mode.
  72 If append mode
  73 is used, the position indicator will be placed at the end-of-file.
  74 The position indicator is maintained by subsequent reads, writes
  75 and positioning requests.
  76 All input occurs as if the characters
  77 were read by successive calls to the
  78 .Xr fgetc 3
  79 function; all output takes place as if all characters were
  80 written by successive calls to the
  81 .Xr fputc 3
  82 function.
  83 .Pp
  84 A file is disassociated from a stream by
  85 .Em closing
  86 the file.
  87 Output streams are flushed (any unwritten buffer contents are transferred
  88 to the host environment) before the stream is disassociated from the file.
  89 The value of a pointer to a
  90 .Dv FILE
  91 object is indeterminate (garbage) after a file is closed.
  92 .Pp
  93 A file may be subsequently reopened, by the same or another program
  94 execution, and its contents reclaimed or modified (if it can be repositioned
  95 at the start).  If the main function returns to its original caller, or
  96 the
  97 .Xr exit 3
  98 function is called, all open files are closed (hence all output
  99 streams are flushed) before program termination.  Other methods
 100 of program termination may not close files properly and hence
 101 buffered output may be lost.  In particular,
 102 .Xr _exit 2
 103 does not flush stdio files.  Neither does an exit due to a signal.
 104 Buffers are flushed by
 105 .Xr abort 3
 106 as required by POSIX, although previous implementations did not.
 107 .Pp
 108 This implementation makes no distinction between
 109 .Dq text
 110 and
 111 .Dq binary
 112 streams.
 113 In effect, all streams are binary.
 114 No translation is performed and no extra padding appears on any stream.
 115 .Pp
 116 At program startup, three streams are predefined and need not be
 117 opened explicitly:
 118 .Bl -bullet -compact -offset indent
 119 .It
 120 .Em standard input
 121 (for reading conventional input),
 122 .It
 123 .Em standard output
 124 (for writing conventional output), and
 125 .It
 126 .Em standard error
 127 (for writing diagnostic output).
 128 .El
 129 These streams are abbreviated
 130 .Em stdin , stdout
 131 and
 132 .Em stderr .
 133 Initially, the standard error stream
 134 is unbuffered; the standard input and output streams are
 135 fully buffered if and only if the streams do not refer to
 136 an interactive or
 137 .Dq terminal
 138 device, as determined by the
 139 .Xr isatty 3
 140 function.
 141 In fact,
 142 .Em all
 143 freshly-opened streams that refer to terminal devices
 144 default to line buffering, and
 145 pending output to such streams is written automatically
 146 whenever such an input stream is read.
 147 Note that this applies only to
 148 .Dq "true reads" ;
 149 if the read request can be satisfied by existing buffered data,
 150 no automatic flush will occur.
 151 In these cases,
 152 or when a large amount of computation is done after printing
 153 part of a line on an output terminal, it is necessary to
 154 .Xr fflush 3
 155 the standard output before going off and computing so that the output
 156 will appear.
 157 Alternatively, these defaults may be modified via the
 158 .Xr setvbuf 3
 159 function.
 160 .Pp
 161 The
 162 .Nm
 163 library is a part of the library
 164 .Nm libc
 165 and routines are automatically loaded as needed by the C compiler.
 166 The
 167 .Tn SYNOPSIS
 168 sections of the following manual pages indicate which include files
 169 are to be used, what the compiler declaration for the function
 170 looks like and which external variables are of interest.
 171 .Pp
 172 The following are defined as macros;
 173 these names may not be re-used
 174 without first removing their current definitions with
 175 .Dv #undef :
 176 .Dv BUFSIZ ,
 177 .Dv EOF ,
 178 .Dv FILENAME_MAX ,
 179 .Dv FOPEN_MAX ,
 180 .Dv L_cuserid ,
 181 .Dv L_ctermid ,
 182 .Dv L_tmpnam ,
 183 .Dv NULL ,
 184 .Dv P_tmpdir ,
 185 .Dv SEEK_CUR ,
 186 .Dv SEEK_END ,
 187 .Dv SEEK_SET ,
 188 .Dv TMP_MAX ,
 189 .Dv clearerr ,
 190 .Dv feof ,
 191 .Dv ferror ,
 192 .Dv fileno ,
 193 .Dv fropen ,
 194 .Dv fwopen ,
 195 .Dv getc ,
 196 .Dv getchar ,
 197 .Dv putc ,
 198 .Dv putchar ,
 199 .Dv stderr ,
 200 .Dv stdin ,
 201 .Dv stdout ,
 202 .Dv vfscanf .
 203 Function versions of the macro functions
 204 .Fn clearerr ,
 205 .Fn feof ,
 206 .Fn ferror ,
 207 .Fn fileno ,
 208 .Fn getc ,
 209 .Fn getchar ,
 210 .Fn putc ,
 211 and
 212 .Fn putchar
 213 exist and will be used if the macro
 214 definitions are explicitly removed.
 215 .Sh SEE ALSO
 216 .Xr close 2 ,
 217 .Xr open 2 ,
 218 .Xr read 2 ,
 219 .Xr write 2
 220 .Sh BUGS
 221 The standard buffered functions do not interact well with certain other
 222 library and system functions, especially
 223 .Xr vfork 2 .
 224 .Sh STANDARDS
 225 The
 226 .Nm
 227 library conforms to
 228 .St -isoC .
 229 .Sh LIST OF FUNCTIONS
 230 .Bl -column "Description"
 231 .It Sy "Function        Description"
 232 .It "asprintf   formatted output conversion"
 233 .It "clearerr   check and reset stream status"
 234 .It "fclose     close a stream"
 235 .It "fdopen     stream open functions"
 236 .It "feof       check and reset stream status"
 237 .It "ferror     check and reset stream status"
 238 .It "fflush     flush a stream"
 239 .It "fgetc      get next character or word from input stream"
 240 .It "fgetln     get a line from a stream"
 241 .It "fgetpos    reposition a stream"
 242 .It "fgets      get a line from a stream"
 243 .It "fileno     check and reset stream status"
 244 .It "fopen      stream open functions"
 245 .It "fprintf    formatted output conversion"
 246 .It "fpurge     flush a stream"
 247 .It "fputc      output a character or word to a stream"
 248 .It "fputs      output a line to a stream"
 249 .It "fread      binary stream input/output"
 250 .It "freopen    stream open functions"
 251 .It "fropen     open a stream"
 252 .It "fscanf     input format conversion"
 253 .It "fseek      reposition a stream"
 254 .It "fsetpos    reposition a stream"
 255 .It "ftell      reposition a stream"
 256 .It "funopen    open a stream"
 257 .It "fwopen     open a stream"
 258 .It "fwrite     binary stream input/output"
 259 .It "getc       get next character or word from input stream"
 260 .It "getchar    get next character or word from input stream"
 261 .It "gets       get a line from a stream"
 262 .It "getw       get next character or word from input stream"
 263 .It "mkdtemp    create unique temporary file"
 264 .It "mkstemp    create unique temporary file"
 265 .It "mktemp     create unique temporary file"
 266 .It "perror     system error messages"
 267 .It "printf     formatted output conversion"
 268 .It "putc       output a character or word to a stream"
 269 .It "putchar    output a character or word to a stream"
 270 .It "puts       output a line to a stream"
 271 .It "putw       output a character or word to a stream"
 272 .It "remove     remove directory entry"
 273 .It "rewind     reposition a stream"
 274 .It "scanf      input format conversion"
 275 .It "setbuf     stream buffering operations"
 276 .It "setbuffer  stream buffering operations"
 277 .It "setlinebuf stream buffering operations"
 278 .It "setvbuf    stream buffering operations"
 279 .It "snprintf   formatted output conversion"
 280 .It "sprintf    formatted output conversion"
 281 .It "sscanf     input format conversion"
 282 .It "strerror   system error messages"
 283 .It "sys_errlist        system error messages"
 284 .It "sys_nerr   system error messages"
 285 .It "tempnam    temporary file routines"
 286 .It "tmpfile    temporary file routines"
 287 .It "tmpnam     temporary file routines"
 288 .It "ungetc     un-get character from input stream"
 289 .It "vasprintf  formatted output conversion"
 290 .It "vfprintf   formatted output conversion"
 291 .It "vfscanf    input format conversion"
 292 .It "vprintf    formatted output conversion"
 293 .It "vscanf     input format conversion"
 294 .It "vsnprintf  formatted output conversion"
 295 .It "vsprintf   formatted output conversion"
 296 .It "vsscanf    input format conversion"
 297 .El