12 Input/Output on Streams

This chapter describes the functions for creating streams and performing input and output operations on them. As discussed in I/O Overview, a stream is a fairly abstract, high-level concept representing a communications channel to a file, device, or process.

• Streams: About the data type representing a stream.
• Standard Streams: Streams to the standard input and output devices are created for you.
• Opening Streams: How to create a stream to talk to a file.
• Closing Streams: Close a stream when you are finished with it.
• Streams and Threads: Issues with streams in threaded programs.
• Streams and I18N: Streams in internationalized applications.
• Simple Output: Unformatted output by characters and lines.
• Character Input: Unformatted input by characters and words.
• Line Input: Reading a line or a record from a stream.
• Unreading: Peeking ahead/pushing back input just read.
• Block Input/Output: Input and output operations on blocks of data.
• Formatted Output: printf and related functions.
• Customizing Printf: You can define new conversion specifiers for printf and friends.
• Formatted Input: scanf and related functions.
• EOF and Errors: How you can tell if an I/O error happens.
• Error Recovery: What you can do about errors.
• Binary Streams: Some systems distinguish between text files and binary files.
• File Positioning: About random-access streams.
• Portable Positioning: Random access on peculiar ISO C systems.
• Stream Buffering: How to control buffering of streams.
• Other Kinds of Streams: Streams that do not necessarily correspond to an open file.
• Formatted Messages: Print strictly formatted messages.