GETC(3P)

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
getc — get a byte from a stream

SYNOPSIS

#include <stdio.h>

int getc(FILE *stream);

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.

The getc() function shall be equivalent to fgetc(), except that if it is implemented as a macro it may evaluate stream more than once, so the argument should never be an expression with side-effects.

RETURN VALUE
Refer to fgetc().

ERRORS
Refer to fgetc().

The following sections are informative.

EXAMPLES
None.

APPLICATION USAGE
If the integer value returned by getc() is stored into a variable of type char and then compared against the integer constant EOF, the comparison may never succeed, because sign-extension of a variable of type char on widening to integer is implementation-defined.

Since it may be implemented as a macro, getc() may treat incorrectly a stream argument with side-effects. In particular, getc(*f++) does not necessarily work as expected. Therefore, use of this function should be preceded by "#undefgetc" in such situations; fgetc() could also be used.

RATIONALE
None.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.

SEE ALSO
Section 2.5, Standard I/O Streams, fgetc()

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

COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 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 .

Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .