printw(3NCURSES) Library calls printw(3NCURSES)
NAME
printw, wprintw, mvprintw, mvwprintw, vwprintw, vw_printw - write for-
matted output to a curses window
SYNOPSIS
#include <curses.h>
int printw(const char *fmt, ...);
int wprintw(WINDOW *win, const char *fmt, ...);
int mvprintw(int y, int x, const char *fmt, ...);
int mvwprintw(WINDOW *win, int y, int x, const char *fmt, ...);
int vw_printw(WINDOW *win, const char *fmt, va_list varglist);
/* obsolete */
int vwprintw(WINDOW *win, const char *fmt, va_list varglist);
DESCRIPTION
printw, wprintw, mvprintw, and mvwprintw are analogous to printf(3). In
effect, the string that would be output by printf(3) is instead output
as though waddstr(3NCURSES) were used with win (or stdscr) as its first
argument.
vwprintw and vw_printw are analogous to vprintf(3), and perform a
wprintw using a variable argument list. The third argument is a
va_list, a pointer to a list of arguments, as defined in stdarg.h.
RETURN VALUE
These functions return ERR upon failure and OK upon success.
In ncurses, failure occurs if the library cannot allocate enough memory
for the buffer into which the output is formatted, or if the window
pointer win is null.
Functions prefixed with “mv” first perform cursor movement and fail if
the position (y, x) is outside the window boundaries.
NOTES
No wide character counterpart functions are defined by the “wide”
ncurses configuration nor by any standard. To format and write a wide-
character string to a curses window, consider using swprintf(3) and
waddwstr(3NCURSES) or similar.
PORTABILITY
X/Open Curses Issue 4 describes these functions. It specifies no error
conditions for them.
ncurses defines vw_printw and vwprintw identically to support legacy ap-
plications. However, the latter is obsolete.
• X/Open Curses Issue 4 Version 2 (1996), marked vwprintw as requiring
varargs.h and “TO BE WITHDRAWN”, and specified vw_printw using the
stdarg.h interface.
• X/Open Curses Issue 5, Draft 2 (December 2007) marked vwprintw
(along with vwscanw and the termcap interface) as withdrawn. After
incorporating review comments, this became X/Open Curses Issue 7
(2009).
• ncurses provides vwprintw, but marks it as deprecated.
HISTORY
While printw was implemented in 4BSD (November 1980), it was unused un-
til 4.2BSD (August 1983), which employed it for games. That early ver-
sion of curses preceded the ANSI C standard of 1989. It did not use
varargs.h, though that had been available since Seventh Edition Unix
(1979). In 1991 (a couple of years after SVr4 was generally available,
and after the C standard was published), other developers updated the
library, using stdarg.h internally in 4.4BSD curses. Even with this im-
provement, BSD curses did not use function prototypes (nor even declare
functions) in curses.h until 1992.
SVr2 (1984) documented printw and wprintw tersely as “printf on stdscr”
and “printf on win”, respectively.
SVr3 (1987) added mvprintw and mvwprintw, with a three-line summary as-
serting that they were analogous to printf(3), explaining that the
string that printf(3) would write to the standard output stream would
instead be output using waddstr to the given window. SVr3 also imple-
mented vwprintw, describing its third parameter as a va_list, defined in
varargs.h, and referred the reader to the manual pages for varargs and
vprintf for detailed descriptions.
SVr4 (1989) introduced no new variations of printw, but provided for us-
ing either varargs.h or stdarg.h to define the va_list type.
X/Open Curses Issue 4 (1995), defined vw_printw to replace vwprintw,
stating that its va_list type is defined in stdarg.h.
SEE ALSO
ncurses(3NCURSES), addstr(3NCURSES), scanw(3NCURSES), printf(3),
vprintf(3)
ncurses 6.5 2025-01-18 printw(3NCURSES)
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