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curs_printw 3x 2024-04-20 ncurses 6.5 Library calls

curs_printw(3x)                  Library calls                 curs_printw(3x)




NAME

       printw,  wprintw,  mvprintw,  mvwprintw,  vwprintw,  vw_printw  - write
       formatted output to a curses window


SYNOPSIS

       #include <curses.h>

       int printw(const char *fmt, ...);
       int wprintw(WINDOW *win, const char *fmt, ...);
       int mvprintw(int y, int x, const char *fmt, ...);
       int mvwprintw(WINDOW *win, int y, int x, const char *fmt, ...);

       int vw_printw(WINDOW *win, const char *fmt, va_list varglist);

       /* obsolete */
       int vwprintw(WINDOW *win, const char *fmt, va_list varglist);


DESCRIPTION

       printw, wprintw, mvprintw, and mvwprintw are  analogous  to  printf(3).
       In  effect,  the  string  that  would be output by printf(3) is instead
       output as though waddstr(3x) were used with  win  (or  stdscr)  as  its
       first argument.

       vwprintw  and  vw_printw  are  analogous  to  vprintf(3), and perform a
       wprintw using a variable  argument  list.   The  third  argument  is  a
       va_list, a pointer to a list of arguments, as defined in stdarg.h.


RETURN VALUE

       These functions return ERR upon failure and OK upon success.

       In ncurses, failure occurs if the library cannot allocate enough memory
       for the buffer into which the output is formatted,  or  if  the  window
       pointer win is null.

       Functions  prefixed with "mv" first perform cursor movement and fail if
       the position (y, x) is outside the window boundaries.


NOTES

       No wide character counterpart  functions  are  defined  by  the  "wide"
       ncurses configuration nor by any standard.  To format and write a wide-
       character string to a curses window,  consider  using  swprintf(3)  and
       waddwstr(3x) or similar.


PORTABILITY

       X/Open  Curses,  Issue  4  describes  these functions.  It specifies no
       error conditions for them.

       ncurses defines vw_printw and vwprintw identically  to  support  legacy
       applications.  However, the latter is obsolete.

       o   X/Open  Curses,  Issue  4  Version  2  (1996),  marked  vwprintw as
           requiring varargs.h and "TO BE WITHDRAWN", and specified  vw_printw
           using the stdarg.h interface.

       o   X/Open  Curses,  Issue  5,  Draft 2 (December 2007) marked vwprintw
           (along with vwscanw and the termcap interface) as withdrawn.  After
           incorporating  review  comments, this became X/Open Curses, Issue 7
           (2009).

       o   ncurses provides vwprintw, but marks it as deprecated.


HISTORY

       While printw was implemented in 4BSD (November  1980),  it  was  unused
       until  4.2BSD  (August  1983), which employed it for games.  That early
       version of curses preceded the ANSI C standard of 1989.  It did not use
       varargs.h,  though  that  had been available since Seventh Edition Unix
       (1979).  In 1991 (a couple of years after SVr4 was generally available,
       and  after  the C standard was published), other developers updated the
       library, using stdarg.h internally in 4.4BSD curses.   Even  with  this
       improvement,  BSD  curses  did  not  use  function prototypes (nor even
       declare functions) in curses.h until 1992.

       SVr2 (1984) documented printw and wprintw tersely as "printf on stdscr"
       and "printf on win", respectively.

       SVr3  (1987)  added  mvprintw  and mvwprintw, with a three-line summary
       asserting that they were analogous to printf(3),  explaining  that  the
       string  that  printf(3) would write to the standard output stream would
       instead be output  using  waddstr  to  the  given  window.   SVr3  also
       implemented  vwprintw,  describing  its  third  parameter as a va_list,
       defined in varargs.h, and referred the reader to the manual  pages  for
       varargs and vprintf for detailed descriptions.

       SVr4  (1989)  introduced  no new variations of printw, but provided for
       using either varargs.h or stdarg.h to define the va_list type.

       X/Open Curses, Issue 4 (1995), defined vw_printw to  replace  vwprintw,
       stating that its va_list type is defined in stdarg.h.


SEE ALSO

       curses(3x), curs_addstr(3x), curs_scanw(3x), printf(3), vprintf(3)



ncurses 6.5                       2024-04-20                   curs_printw(3x)