STDIN(3) Library Functions Manual STDIN(3)

stderr stdin stdoutstandard I/O streams

#include <stdio.h>

extern FILE *stderr, *stdin, *stdout;

[CX] The functionality described on this reference page is aligned with the ISO C standard. Any conflict between the requirements described here and the ISO C standard is unintentional. This volume of POSIX.1-2008 defers to the ISO C standard.

A file with associated buffering is called a and is declared to be a pointer to a defined type . The fopen(3) function shall create certain descriptive data for a stream and return a pointer to designate the stream in all further transactions. Normally, there are three open streams with constant pointers declared in the <stdio.h> header and associated with the standard open files.

At program start-up, three streams shall be predefined and need not be opened explicitly: standard input (for reading conventional input), standard output (for writing conventional output), and standard error (for writing diagnostic output). When opened, the standard error stream is not fully buffered; the standard input and standard output streams are fully buffered if and only if the stream can be determined not to refer to an interactive device.

[CX] The following symbolic values in <unistd.h> define the file descriptors that shall be associated with the C-language stdin, , and stderr when the application is started:

Standard input value, stdin . Its value is 0.
Standard output value, stdout . Its value is 1.
Standard error value, stderr . Its value is 2.

The stderr stream is expected to be open for reading and writing.

None.

No errors are defined.

None.

None.

None.

None.

fclose(3) , feof(3) , ferror(3) , fileno(3) , fopen(3) , fprintf(3) , fread(3) , fscanf(3) , fseek(3) , getc(3) , gets(3) , popen(3) , putc(3) , puts(3) , read(3) , setbuf(3) , setvbuf(3) , tmpfile(3) , ungetc(3) , vfprintf(3)

XBD <stdio.h> , <unistd.h>

First released in Issue 1.

Extensions beyond the ISO C standard are marked.

A note that stderr is expected to be open for reading and writing is added to the DESCRIPTION.

January 1, 2008 posix.fail