Stdputchar

Stdputchar is a name used in some educational materials and non-standard libraries to describe a function that writes a single character to the standard output. It is analogous to the C standard library function putchar, but it is not part of the ISO C standard and thus not guaranteed to be available on all platforms.

Typical definitions of stdputchar resemble putchar in spirit. A common prototype is int stdputchar(int c); The function writes the character corresponding to the input value c to the standard output and returns the character written, usually as an unsigned char promoted to int, or an error indicator such as EOF on failure. Some nonstandard variants may define void stdputchar(char c) or return a boolean to signal success. Because stdputchar is not standardized, the exact signature and behavior depend on the specific implementation.

Usage of stdputchar in teaching materials serves to illustrate basic character I/O, buffering behavior, and simple error handling without requiring knowledge of more complex I/O routines. In practice, code examples show stdputchar in simple loops or for emitting individual characters or message fragments to stdout, similar to how putchar is used in standard C.

Portability considerations are important: since stdputchar is not part of the C standard library, programs relying on it may not compile or behave identically on different compilers or platforms. If available, it often maps to the standard putchar or a thin wrapper around fputc.

See also: putchar, fputc, stdio.h.