GNU Octave
13.2 C-Style I/O Functions
Octave's C-style input and output functions provide most of the
functionality of the C programming language's standard I/O library. The
argument lists for some of the input functions are slightly different,
however, because Octave has no way of passing arguments by reference.
In the following, file refers to a file name and fid refers
to an integer file number, as returned by fopen.
There are three files that are always available. Although these files
can be accessed using their corresponding numeric file ids, you should
always use the symbolic names given in the table below, since it will
make your programs easier to understand.
- Built-in Variable: stdin
- The standard input stream (file id 0). When Octave is used
interactively, this is filtered through the command line editing
functions.
- Built-in Variable: stdout
- The standard output stream (file id 1). Data written to the
standard output is normally filtered through the pager.
- Built-in Variable: stderr
- The standard error stream (file id 2). Even if paging is turned on,
the standard error is not sent to the pager. It is useful for error
messages and prompts.
