'\" t
.\" Copyright, The contributors to the Linux man-pages project
.\"
.\" SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
.\"
.TH fgetwc 3 2025-05-06 "Linux man-pages 6.14"
.SH NAME
fgetwc, getwc \- read a wide character from a FILE stream
.SH LIBRARY
Standard C library
.RI ( libc ,\~ \-lc )
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <stdio.h>
.B #include <wchar.h>
.P
.BI "wint_t fgetwc(FILE *" stream );
.BI "wint_t getwc(FILE *" stream );
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.BR fgetwc ()
function is the wide-character equivalent
of the
.BR fgetc (3)
function.
It reads a wide character from
.I stream
and returns it.
If the end of stream is reached, or if
.I ferror(stream)
becomes true,
it returns
.BR WEOF .
If a wide-character conversion error occurs, it sets
.I errno
to
.B EILSEQ
and returns
.BR WEOF .
.P
The
.BR getwc ()
function or macro functions identically to
.BR fgetwc ().
It may be implemented as a macro, and may evaluate its argument
more than once.
There is no reason ever to use it.
.P
For nonlocking counterparts, see
.BR unlocked_stdio (3).
.SH RETURN VALUE
On success,
.BR fgetwc ()
returns the next wide-character from the stream.
Otherwise,
.B WEOF
is returned, and
.I errno
is set to indicate the error.
.SH ERRORS
Apart from the usual ones, there is
.TP
.B EILSEQ
The data obtained from the input stream does not
form a valid character.
.SH ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
.BR attributes (7).
.TS
allbox;
lbx lb lb
l l l.
Interface	Attribute	Value
T{
.na
.nh
.BR fgetwc (),
.BR getwc ()
T}	Thread safety	MT-Safe
.TE
.SH STANDARDS
C11, POSIX.1-2008.
.SH HISTORY
POSIX.1-2001, C99.
.SH NOTES
The behavior of
.BR fgetwc ()
depends on the
.B LC_CTYPE
category of the
current locale.
.P
In the absence of additional information passed to the
.BR fopen (3)
call, it is
reasonable to expect that
.BR fgetwc ()
will actually read a multibyte sequence
from the stream and then convert it to a wide character.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR fgetws (3),
.BR fputwc (3),
.BR ungetwc (3),
.BR unlocked_stdio (3)