isatty(3)

isatty3

Test whether a file descriptor refers to a terminal

Usage

#include <unistd.h>

int isatty(int fd);

Library

Standard C library (libc, -lc)

Overview

The isatty() function tests whether fd is an open file descriptor referring to a terminal.

Return value

isatty() returns 1 if fd is an open file descriptor referring to a terminal; otherwise 0 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error.

Errors

EBADF

fd is not a valid file descriptor.

ENOTTY

fd refers to a file other than a terminal. On some older kernels, some types of files resulted in the error EINVAL in this case (which is a violation of POSIX, which specifies the error ENOTTY).

Attributes

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).

InterfaceAttributeValue
isatty()Thread safetyMT-Safe

Releases

19 releases since Debian 1.1 (Buzz); the text changed 14 times.

  1. 1.1–2.1
  2. 2.2
  3. 3.0
  4. 3.1
  5. 4.0
  6. 5.0
  7. 6.0
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. 9
  11. 10
  12. 11
  13. 12
  14. 13
  15. Arch

Standards

POSIX.1-2008.

History

POSIX.1-2001, SVr4, 4.3BSD.

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