outputting

Outputting is the act of producing data, signals, or information from a system to an external recipient or medium. In computing, outputting describes how a program or device presents results to users or other systems, in contrast with input which brings data into the system. Common targets include displays, printers, speakers, files, networks, and other devices.

Programs typically write to standard output or to named streams, which may be buffered for performance and flushed to ensure timely delivery. Key technical concerns include encoding, data formats, and channels. Text output uses encodings such as ASCII or UTF-8, while binary output carries non-text data. Formats range from plain text to JSON, XML, CSV, or custom structures.

Output can be synchronous or asynchronous, real-time or batched, and may be subject to buffering, rate limiting, and error handling. Applications include displaying results to users, generating logs and reports, exporting data for analysis, and feeding other systems via network protocols or interprocess communication.

Outside computing, the term is also used in linguistics and psychology to describe language production or other communicative acts. In this sense, outputting covers spoken language, written text, and gestural communication produced by a person or system.

See also: input, I/O, buffering, streaming, data export.