man7.org > Linux > man-pages

Linux/UNIX system programming training

getwchar(3) — Linux manual page

NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ATTRIBUTES | STANDARDS | HISTORY | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON 

getwchar(3)              Library Functions Manual             getwchar(3)

NAME         top

       getwchar - read a wide character from standard input

LIBRARY         top

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <wchar.h>

       wint_t getwchar(void);

DESCRIPTION         top

       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         top

       The getwchar() function returns the next wide-character from
       standard input, or WEOF.

ATTRIBUTES         top

       For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
       attributes(7).
       โ”Œโ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”ฌโ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”ฌโ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”
       โ”‚ Interface                            โ”‚ Attribute     โ”‚ Value   โ”‚
       โ”œโ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”ผโ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”ผโ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”ค
       โ”‚ getwchar()                           โ”‚ Thread safety โ”‚ MT-Safe โ”‚
       โ””โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”ดโ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”ดโ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”€โ”˜

STANDARDS         top

       C11, POSIX.1-2008.

HISTORY         top

       C99, POSIX.1-2001.

NOTES         top

       The behavior of getwchar() depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the
       current locale.

       It is reasonable to expect that getwchar() will actually read a
       multibyte sequence from standard input and then convert it to a
       wide character.

SEE ALSO         top

       fgetwc(3), unlocked_stdio(3)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
       user-space interface documentation) project.  Information about
       the project can be found at 
       โŸจhttps://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/โŸฉ.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, see
       โŸจhttps://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTINGโŸฉ.
       This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.18.tar.gz
       fetched from
       โŸจhttps://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/โŸฉ on
       2026-05-24.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
       version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-
       to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
       improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not
       part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Linux man-pages 6.18            2026-02-08                    getwchar(3)

Pages that refer to this page: fgetc(3),  gets(3)

HTML rendering created 2026-05-30 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface.

For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here.

Hosting by jambit GmbH.

Cover of TLPI