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The input and output functions, types and macros defined in
<stdio.h> represent nearly one third of the
library.
A stream is a source or destination of data that may
be associated with a disk or other peripheral. The library
supports text streams and binary streams, although on some systems,
notably UNIX, these are identical. A text stream is a sequence
of lines; each line has zero or more characters and is terminated by
'\n'. An environment may need to convert a text
stream to or from some other representation (such as mapping
'\n' to carriage return and linefeed). A binary
stream is a sequence of unprocessed bytes that record internal data,
with the property that if it written, then read back on the same
system, it will compare equal.
A stream is connected to a file or device by opening
it; the connection is broken by closing the stream.
Opening a file returns a pointer to an object of type
FILE, which records whatever information is necessary to
control the stream. We will use "file pointer" and "stream"
interchangeably when there is no ambiguity.
When a program begins execution, the three streams stdin,
stdout, and stderr are already open.
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Last modified: Fri Feb 25 13:50:56 2000
