isatty - Man Page

test whether a file descriptor refers to a terminal

Library

Standard C library (libc, -lc)

Synopsis

#include <unistd.h>

int isatty(int fd);

Description

The isatty() function tests whether fd is an open file descriptor referring to a terminal.

Return Value

isatty() returns 1 if fd is an open file descriptor referring to a terminal; otherwise 0 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error.

Errors

EBADF

fd is not a valid file descriptor.

ENOTTY

fd refers to a file other than a terminal. On some older kernels, some types of files resulted in the error EINVAL in this case (which is a violation of POSIX, which specifies the error ENOTTY).

Attributes

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).

InterfaceAttributeValue
isatty()Thread safetyMT-Safe

Standards

POSIX.1-2008.

History

POSIX.1-2001, SVr4, 4.3BSD.

See Also

fstat(2), ttyname(3)

Referenced By

bash(1), cdecl(1), clush(1), mailcap(5), rc(1), tcpslice(8), tickit_term_build(3), ttyname(3).

2024-05-02 Linux man-pages 6.9.1