hpux man page for orientation

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)