# curs_printw 3x 2023-12-23 ncurses 6.4 Library calls

    curs_printw(3x)                  Library calls                 curs_printw(3x)

## NAME

           printw,  wprintw,  mvprintw,  mvwprintw,  vwprintw,  vw_printw  - write
           formatted 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(3x) 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  with  a  "mv"  prefix  first perform a cursor movement using
           wmove, and fail if the position is outside the window.

## 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(3x) 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
           applications.  However, the latter is obsolete.

           o   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               requiring varargs.h and "TO BE WITHDRAWN", and specified  vw_printw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.

           o   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).

           o   ncurses provides vwprintw, but marks it as deprecated.

## HISTORY

           While printw was implemented in 4BSD (November  1980),  it  was  unused
           until  4.2BSD  (August  1983), which employed it for games.  That early
           version 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
           improvement,  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
           asserting 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
           implemented  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
           using 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

           curses(3x), curs_addstr(3x), curs_scanw(3x), printf(3), vprintf(3)

    ncurses 6.4                       2023-12-23                   curs_printw(3x)