orientation(5) File Formats Manual orientation(5)
NAME
orientation - the orientation of a stream
DESCRIPTION
The orientation of a stream is a property of a object that is handled as a input/output stream. It is useful when the input/output model
assumes that characters are handled as wide-characters within an application and stored as multi-byte characters in files, and that all the
wide-character input/output functions begin executing with the stream positioned at the boundary between two multi-byte characters.
After a stream is associated with a file, but before any operations are performed on the stream, the stream is without orientation. If a
wide-character input or output function is applied to a stream without orientation, the stream becomes wide-oriented implicitly. Likewise,
if a byte input or output operation is applied to a stream without orientation, the stream becomes byte-oriented implicitly. Only the
function can alter the orientation of a stream explicitly when the stream is without orientation.
Just after a stream is associated with a pipe by the function, the stream is byte-oriented.
After the stream becomes byte-oriented or wide-oriented, the orientation of a stream will be fixed and can not be changed until the stream
is closed.
The following functions are wide-character input/output functions.
The following functions are byte input/output functions.
EXAMPLES
To read characters from a stream when the orientation of the stream is unknown :
WARNINGS
If byte input/output functions are applied to a wide-oriented stream or wide-character input/output functions are applied to a byte-ori-
ented stream, the behavior is undefined.
AUTHOR
The functionality of the orientation of a stream was developed by HP and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.
SEE ALSO
fgetws(3C), fopen(3S), fread(3S), fwide(3C), fwprintf(3C), fwscanf(3C), getc(3S), gets(3S), getwc(3C), popen(3S), printf(3S), putc(3S),
puts(3S), putwc(3C), putws(3C), scanf(3S), ungetc(3S), ungetwc(3C).
orientation(5)