setbuf - Man Page

assign buffering to a stream

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.

Synopsis

#include <stdio.h>

void setbuf(FILE *restrict stream, char *restrict buf);

Description

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.1-2017 defers to the ISO C standard.

Except that it returns no value, the function call:

setbuf(stream, buf)

shall be equivalent to:

setvbuf(stream, buf, _IOFBF, BUFSIZ)

if buf is not a null pointer, or to:

setvbuf(stream, buf, _IONBF, BUFSIZ)

if buf is a null pointer.

Return Value

The setbuf() function shall not return a value.

Errors

Although the setvbuf() interface may set errno in defined ways, the value of errno after a call to setbuf() is unspecified.

The following sections are informative.

Examples

None.

Application Usage

A common source of error is allocating buffer space as an “automatic” variable in a code block, and then failing to close the stream in the same block.

With setbuf(), allocating a buffer of BUFSIZ bytes does not necessarily imply that all of BUFSIZ bytes are used for the buffer area.

Since errno is not required to be unchanged on success, in order to correctly detect and possibly recover from errors, applications should use setvbuf() instead of setbuf().

Rationale

None.

Future Directions

None.

See Also

Section 2.5, Standard I/O Streams, fopen(), setvbuf()

The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1-2017, <stdio.h>

Referenced By

fputc(3p), fputwc(3p), setvbuf(3p), stdin(3p), stdio.h(0p), ungetc(3p), ungetwc(3p).

2017 IEEE/The Open Group POSIX Programmer's Manual