6.18 <stdio.h> Input and Output

The header file stdio.h consists of types, macros, and functions that perform input and output operations on streams. The MPLAB XC16, XC-DSC, and XC32 compilers also implement functions that permit operations on files, which can be opened as a stream using the fopen function and the FILE type.

A stream is a pipeline for the flow of data, hiding much of the complexity and non-uniformity of IO operations that is present when data is transferred to and from different devices and on different systems. At start-up, three streams are automatically opened: stdin, stdout and stderr, representing the standard input, standard output, and standard error locations. The particular peripheral or device feature associated with these streams can be established by customizing helper functions, described in Customizing IO Functions.

The stdio.h header also contains functions that read input (such as scanf) and write output (such as printf).