getwchar(3)

getwchar3

Read a wide character from standard input

Usage

#include <wchar.h>

wint_t getwchar(void);

Library

Standard C library (libc, -lc)

Overview

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).

InterfaceAttributeValue
getwchar()Thread safetyMT-Safe

Notes

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.

Releases

14 releases since Debian 2.2 (Potato); the text changed 13 times.

  1. 2.2
  2. 3.0
  3. 3.1
  4. 4.0
  5. 5.0
  6. 6.0
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. Arch

Standards

C11, POSIX.1-2008.

History

C99, POSIX.1-2001.

From man-pages 6.19-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.