# curs_printw 3x 2025-08-16 ncurses 6.5 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 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(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  However, the latter is obsolete.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               requiring  varargs.h and "TO BE WITHDRAWN", and specified vw_printw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

           4BSD (1980) introduced wprintw and its variants.  It implemented all as
           functions, not macros; this initial distribution of curses preceded the
           ANSI C standard of 1989, prior to which a variadic macro  facility  was
           not  widely  available in the language.  printw went unused in Berkeley
           distributions until 4.1cBSD (1983), which employed it in games.  4BSD's
           wprintw did not use varargs.h, which 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.

           4BSD  documented  printw  and wprintw tersely as "printf on stdscr" and
           "printf on win", respectively.

           SVr3 summarized the functions in three lines, asserting that they  were
           analogous  to  printf(3)  and 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 added 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 6.5                       2025-08-16                   curs_printw(3x)