getwchar(3) Library Functions Manual getwchar(3)
NAME
getwchar - read a wide character from standard input
LIBRARY
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <wchar.h>
wint_t getwchar(void);
DESCRIPTION
The getwchar() function is the wide-character equivalent of the
getchar(3) function. It reads a wide character from stdin and returns
it. If the end of stream is reached, or if ferror(stdin) becomes true,
it returns WEOF. If a wide-character conversion error occurs, it sets
errno to EILSEQ and returns WEOF.
For a nonlocking counterpart, see unlocked_stdio(3).
RETURN VALUE
The getwchar() function returns the next wide-character from standard
input, or WEOF.
ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
┌────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
│ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
│ getwchar() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
└────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘
STANDARDS
C11, POSIX.1-2008.
HISTORY
C99, POSIX.1-2001.
NOTES
The behavior of getwchar() depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the cur-
rent locale.
It is reasonable to expect that getwchar() will actually read a multi-
byte sequence from standard input and then convert it to a wide charac-
ter.
SEE ALSO
fgetwc(3), unlocked_stdio(3)
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-05-02 getwchar(3)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 04:14:48 CET 2025.