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Concept
Standard streams
Summary
In computer programming, standard streams are interconnected input and output communication channels between a computer program and its environment when it begins execution. The three input/output (I/O) connections are called standard input (stdin), standard output (stdout) and standard error (stderr). Originally I/O happened via a physically connected system console (input via keyboard, output via monitor), but standard streams abstract this. When a command is executed via an interactive shell, the streams are typically connected to the text terminal on which the shell is running, but can be changed with redirection or a pipeline. More generally, a child process inherits the standard streams of its parent process.
Users generally know standard streams as input and output channels that handle data coming from an input device, or that write data from the application. The data may be text with any encoding, or .
In many modern systems, the standard error stream of a program is redirected into a log file, typically for error analysis purposes.
Streams may be used to chain applications, meaning that the output stream of one program can be redirected to be the input stream to another application. In many operating systems this is expressed by listing the application names, separated by the vertical bar character, for this reason often called the pipeline character. A well-known example is the use of a pagination application, such as more, providing the user control over the display of the output stream on the display.
In most operating systems predating Unix, programs had to explicitly connect to the appropriate input and output devices. OS-specific intricacies caused this to be a tedious programming task. On many systems it was necessary to obtain control of environment settings, access a local file table, determine the intended data set, and handle hardware correctly in the case of a punch card reader, magnetic tape drive, disk drive, line printer, card punch, or interactive terminal.
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