Stream states

The valid states, and state transitions, for a stream are shown in the following figure.

Each of the circles denotes a stable state. Each of the lines denotes a transition that can occur as the result of a function call that operates on the stream. Five groups of functions can cause state transitions.

Functions in the first three groups are declared in <stdio.h>:

• The byte read functions: fgetc, fgets, fread, fscanf, getc, getchar, gets, scanf, and ungetc

• The byte write functions: fprintf, fputc, fputs, fwrite, printf, putc, putchar, puts, vfprintf, and vprintf

• The position functions: fflush, fseek, fsetpos, and rewind

Functions in the remaining two groups are declared in <wchar.h>:

• The wide read functions: fgetwc, fgetws, fwscanf, getwc, getwchar, ungetwc, and wscanf,

• The wide write functions: fwprintf, fputwc, fputws, putwc, putwchar, vfwprintf, vwprintf, and wprintf,

The state diagram shows that you must call one of the position functions between most write and read operations:

• You can't call a read function if the last operation on the stream was a write.

• You can't call a write function if the last operation on the stream was a read, unless that read operation set the end-of-file indicator.

Finally, the state diagram shows that a position operation never decreases the number of valid function calls that can follow.

See also

Files and streams