.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by .\" the American National Standards Committee X3, on Information .\" Processing Systems. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. 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IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)setbuf.3 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93 .\" $FreeBSD$ .\" .Dd June 4, 1993 .Dt SETBUF 3 .Os BSD 4 .Sh NAME .Nm setbuf , .Nm setbuffer , .Nm setlinebuf , .Nm setvbuf .Nd stream buffering operations .Sh LIBRARY .Lb libc .Sh SYNOPSIS .Fd #include .Ft void .Fn setbuf "FILE *stream" "char *buf" .Ft void .Fn setbuffer "FILE *stream" "char *buf" "int size" .Ft int .Fn setlinebuf "FILE *stream" .Ft int .Fn setvbuf "FILE *stream" "char *buf" "int mode" "size_t size" .Sh DESCRIPTION The three types of buffering available are unbuffered, block buffered, and line buffered. When an output stream is unbuffered, information appears on the destination file or terminal as soon as written; when it is block buffered many characters are saved up and written as a block; when it is line buffered characters are saved up until a newline is output or input is read from any stream attached to a terminal device (typically stdin). The function .Xr fflush 3 may be used to force the block out early. (See .Xr fclose 3 . ) .Pp Normally all files are block buffered. When the first .Tn I/O operation occurs on a file, .Xr malloc 3 is called, and an optimally-sized buffer is obtained. If a stream refers to a terminal (as .Em stdout normally does) it is line buffered. The standard error stream .Em stderr is always unbuffered. .Pp The .Fn setvbuf function may be used to alter the buffering behavior of a stream. The .Fa mode parameter must be one of the following three macros: .Bl -tag -width _IOFBF -offset indent .It Dv _IONBF unbuffered .It Dv _IOLBF line buffered .It Dv _IOFBF fully buffered .El .Pp The .Fa size parameter may be given as zero to obtain deferred optimal-size buffer allocation as usual. If it is not zero, then except for unbuffered files, the .Fa buf argument should point to a buffer at least .Fa size bytes long; this buffer will be used instead of the current buffer. (If the .Fa size argument is not zero but .Fa buf is .Dv NULL , a buffer of the given size will be allocated immediately, and released on close. This is an extension to ANSI C; portable code should use a size of 0 with any .Dv NULL buffer.) .Pp The .Fn setvbuf function may be used at any time, but may have peculiar side effects (such as discarding input or flushing output) if the stream is ``active''. Portable applications should call it only once on any given stream, and before any .Tn I/O is performed. .Pp The other three calls are, in effect, simply aliases for calls to .Fn setvbuf . Except for the lack of a return value, the .Fn setbuf function is exactly equivalent to the call .Pp .Dl "setvbuf(stream, buf, buf ? _IOFBF : _IONBF, BUFSIZ);" .Pp The .Fn setbuffer function is the same, except that the size of the buffer is up to the caller, rather than being determined by the default .Dv BUFSIZ . The .Fn setlinebuf function is exactly equivalent to the call: .Pp .Dl "setvbuf(stream, (char *)NULL, _IOLBF, 0);" .Sh RETURN VALUES The .Fn setvbuf function returns 0 on success, or .Dv EOF if the request cannot be honored (note that the stream is still functional in this case). .Pp The .Fn setlinebuf function returns what the equivalent .Fn setvbuf would have returned. .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr fclose 3 , .Xr fopen 3 , .Xr fread 3 , .Xr malloc 3 , .Xr printf 3 , .Xr puts 3 .Sh STANDARDS The .Fn setbuf and .Fn setvbuf functions conform to .St -isoC . .Sh BUGS The .Fn setbuffer and .Fn setlinebuf functions are not portable to versions of .Bx before .Bx 4.2 . On .Bx 4.2 and .Bx 4.3 systems, .Fn setbuf always uses a suboptimal buffer size and should be avoided.