NAME

       printw, wprintw, mvprintw, mvwprintw, vwprintw, vw_printw - print formatted output in curses windows

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

       The printw, wprintw, mvprintw and mvwprintw routines are analogous to printf [see printf(3)].  In effect,
       the string that would be output by printf is output instead as though waddstr were used on the given win‐
       dow.

       The  vwprintw and wv_printw routines are analogous to vprintf [see printf(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

       Routines  that  return  an  integer return ERR upon failure and OK (SVr4 only specifies "an integer value
       other than ERR") upon successful completion.

       X/Open defines no error conditions.  In this implementation, an error may be returned if it cannot  allo‐
       cate  enough  memory  for  the  buffer used to format the results.  It will return an error if the window
       pointer is null.

       Functions with a “mv” prefix first perform a cursor movement using wmove, and return an error if the  po‐
       sition is outside the window, or if the window pointer is null.

PORTABILITY

       In  this implementation, vw_printw and vwprintw are equivalent, to support legacy applications.  However,
       the latter (vwprintw) is obsolete:

       •   The XSI Curses standard, Issue 4 described these functions.  The function vwprintw is  marked  TO  BE
           WITHDRAWN, and is to be replaced by a function vw_printw using the <stdarg.h> interface.

       •   The  Single  Unix  Specification, Version 2 states that vw_printw  is preferred to vwprintw since the
           latter requires including <varargs.h>, which cannot be used in the same file as <stdarg.h>.  This im‐
           plementation uses <stdarg.h> for both, because that header is included in <curses.h>.

       •   X/Open Curses, Issue 5 (December 2007) marked vwprintw (along with vwscanw and the termcap interface)
           as withdrawn.

SEE ALSO

       ncurses(3NCURSES), addstr(3NCURSES), scanw(3NCURSES), curs_termcap(3X), printf(3), vprintf(3).

                                                                                                printw(3NCURSES)