## 16 Input and Output

There are two distinct classes of input and output functions. The first set are modeled after the functions available in Matlab. The second set are modeled after the standard I/O library used by the C programming language and offer more flexibility and control over the output.

When running interactively, Octave normally sends any output intended for your terminal that is more than one screen long to a paging program, such as `less` or `more`. This avoids the problem of having a large volume of output stream by before you can read it. With `less` (and some versions of `more`) you can also scan forward and backward, and search for specific items.

Normally, no output is displayed by the pager until just before Octave is ready to print the top level prompt, or read from the standard input (for example, by using the `fscanf` or `scanf` functions). This means that there may be some delay before any output appears on your screen if you have asked Octave to perform a significant amount of work with a single command statement. The function `fflush` may be used to force output to be sent to the pager (or any other stream) immediately.

You can select the program to run as the pager by setting the variable `PAGER`, and you can turn paging off by setting the value of the variable `page_screen_output` to 0.

— Command: more
— Command: more on
— Command: more off

> Turn output pagination on or off. Without an argument, `more` toggles the current state.

— Built-in Variable: PAGER

> The default value is normally `"less"`, `"more"`, or `"pg"`, depending on what programs are installed on your system. See Installation.

> When running interactively, Octave sends any output intended for your terminal that is more than one screen long to the program named by the value of the variable `PAGER`.

— Built-in Variable: page_screen_output

> If the value of `page_screen_output` is nonzero, all output intended for the screen that is longer than one page is sent through a pager. This allows you to view one screenful at a time. Some pagers (such as `less`—see Installation) are also capable of moving backward on the output. The default value is 1.

— Built-in Variable: page_output_immediately

> If the value of `page_output_immediately` is nonzero, Octave sends output to the pager as soon as it is available. Otherwise, Octave buffers its output and waits until just before the prompt is printed to flush it to the pager. The default value is 0.

— Built-in Function: fflush (fid)

> Flush output to fid. This is useful for ensuring that all pending output makes it to the screen before some other event occurs. For example, it is always a good idea to flush the standard output stream before calling `input`.

> `fflush` returns 0 on success and an OS dependent error value (−1 on unix) on error.