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I/O Streams

Explore how to use input and output streams in C to handle data from keyboards, files, and devices. Understand standard streams, formatted input/output with printf and scanf, and character-based I/O for efficient program interaction.

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Streams in C

The standard C library (linked to using #include <stdio.h>) includes a handful of functions for performing input and output in C.

C and UNIX make use of a concept called streams in which data can be sent and received between programs, devices, and the operating system. We can distinguish between two types of streams, text and binary.

  • Text streams are made up of lines, where each line has zero or more characters and is terminated by a newline character \n.
  • Binary streams are more ‘raw’ and consist of a stream of any number of bytes.

C programs all have three ‘built-in’ streams: standard input, standard output, and standard error. Here are some examples of how standard input and standard output streams are used:

  • When we interact with a C program in a terminal and type values in to pass to the program, we ...