stderr (3p) - Linux Manuals

stderr: standard I/O streams

PROLOG

This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME

stderr, stdin, stdout - standard I/O streams

SYNOPSIS

#include <stdio.h>

extern FILE *stderr, *stdin, *stdout;

DESCRIPTION

A file with associated buffering is called a stream and is declared to be a pointer to a defined type FILE. The fopen() 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.

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

STDIN_FILENO

Standard input value, stdin. Its value is 0.

STDOUT_FILENO

Standard output value, stdout. Its value is 1.

STDERR_FILENO

Standard error value, stderr. Its value is 2.

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

RETURN VALUE

None.

ERRORS

No errors are defined.

The following sections are informative.

EXAMPLES

None.

APPLICATION USAGE

None.

RATIONALE

None.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

None.

COPYRIGHT

Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .