fgets(3) — Linux manual page

NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | ATTRIBUTES | STANDARDS | HISTORY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

fgets(3)                 Library Functions Manual                fgets(3)

NAME         top

       fgets - FILE get line-string

LIBRARY         top

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <stdio.h>

       char *fgets(int size;
                   char s[restrict size], int size, FILE *restrict stream);

DESCRIPTION         top

       fgets() reads in at most one less than size characters from stream
       and stores them into the buffer pointed to by s.  Reading stops
       after an EOF or a newline.  If a newline is read, it is stored
       into the buffer.  A terminating null byte ('\0') is stored after
       the last character in the buffer.

RETURN VALUE         top

       fgets() returns s on success.

       When end of file occurs while no characters have been read, NULL
       is returned.

       On error, NULL is returned, and errno is set to indicate the
       error.

ERRORS         top

       See fgetc(3).

ATTRIBUTES         top

       For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
       attributes(7).
       ┌──────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
       │ Interface                            Attribute     Value   │
       ├──────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
       │ fgets()                              │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
       └──────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘

STANDARDS         top

       C11, POSIX.1-2008.

HISTORY         top

       POSIX.1-2001, C89.

SEE ALSO         top

       ferror(3), fgetc(3), fgetws(3), fopen(3), fread(3), getline(3),
       unlocked_stdio(3)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
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Linux man-pages 6.19            2026-08-19                       fgets(3)

Pages that refer to this page: auplugin_fgets(3)fgetc(3)fgetws(3)getline(3)gets(3)memccpy(3)puts(3)rpmatch(3)scanf(3)stdio(3)