C in a Nutshell

Chapter 16. Functions at a Glance

This chapter lists the functions in the standard library according to their respective areas of application, describing shared features of the functions and their relationships to one another. This compilation might help you to find the right function for your purposes while programming.

Tip

The individual functions are described in detail in Chapter 17, which explains them in alphabetical order, with examples.

Input and Output

We have dealt with this topic in detail in Chapter 13, which contains sections on I/O streams, sequential and random file access , formatted I/O, and error handling. A tabular list of the I/O functions will therefore suffice here. Table 16-1 lists general file access functions declared in the header stdio.h.

Table 16-1. General file access functions

Purpose	Functions
Rename a file, delete a file	rename(), remove()
Create and/or open a file	fopen(), freopen(), tmpfile()
Close a file	fclose()
Generate a unique filename	tmpnam()
Query or clear file access flags	feof(), ferror(), clearerr()
Query the current file access position	ftell(), fgetpos()
Change the current file access position	rewind(), fseek(), fsetpos()
Write buffer contents to file	fflush()
Control file buffering	setbuf(), setvbuf()

There are two complete sets of functions for input and output of characters and strings: the byte-character and the wide-character I/O functions (see "Byte-Oriented and Wide-Oriented Streams" in Chapter 13 for more information). The wide-character functions operate ...