getwchar(3)

✨ getwchar — the manual page, but make it cute ✨

okay bestie, welcome to getwchar(3) from the Library Functions Manual 💖 get comfy, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let's talk about reading wide characters off stdin like the icon she is.

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🎀 NAME 🎀

getwchar — read a wide character from standard input

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💜 LIBRARY 💜

Standard C library (that's libc, link it with -lc) 🫶

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <wchar.h>

wint_t getwchar(void);

that's it. no arguments. she takes nothing and she gives you a wide character. queen of minimalism 👑

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so. getwchar() is literally the wide-character equivalent of the getchar(3) function — same energy, wider vibe. it reads a wide character from stdin and returns it. that's the whole job, and she does it flawlessly 💅

if the end of stream is reached, or if ferror(stdin) becomes true, she returns WEOF. no drama, just facts.

and if a wide-character conversion error happens? she sets errno to EILSEQ and returns WEOF. so like, if you see EILSEQ pop up, that's the conversion going "bestie i cannot work with this" 😭

oh and psst — if you wanted a nonlocking counterpart, go check unlocked_stdio(3) 🦋

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🔥 RETURN VALUE 🔥

getwchar() returns the next wide-character from standard input, or WEOF. that's the whole range of outcomes. either a character or the sad little WEOF. no in-between, periodt.

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💖 ATTRIBUTES 💖

for an explanation of the terms used in this section, go peek at attributes(7) — iykyk 👑

• Interface: getwchar()
  • Attribute: Thread safety
  • Value: MT-Safe

so yes, she's MT-Safe, meaning you can call her from multiple threads and she will Not be messy about it. slay 💅

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🌈 STANDARDS 🌈

C11, POSIX.1-2008.

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👑 HISTORY 👑

C99, POSIX.1-2001.

she's been around. an OG. iconic behavior honestly 🎀

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🦋 NOTES 🦋

the behavior of getwchar() depends on the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale. so like, locale matters, don't forget her fr fr.

and it is reasonable to expect that getwchar() will actually read a multibyte sequence from standard input and then convert it to a wide character. that's the vibe. multibyte in, wide character out 🧚

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💀 SEE ALSO 💀

• fgetwc(3)
• unlocked_stdio(3)

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so that's getwchar(3)! tiny function, huge main character energy, reads wide chars from stdin and never makes it weird 💜

mwah 💋 — this page came from Linux man-pages 6.20, dated 2026-02-08, and yeah that's the whole getwchar(3) footer, folded into a little sign-off because you deserve the full deets and also a goodbye hug 🫶✨