Elixir v1.9.1 IO View Source

Functions handling input/output (IO).

Many functions in this module expect an IO device as an argument. An IO device must be a PID or an atom representing a process. For convenience, Elixir provides :stdio and :stderr as shortcuts to Erlang's :standard_io and :standard_error.

The majority of the functions expect chardata. In case another type is given, functions will convert those types to string via the String.Chars protocol (as shown in typespecs). For more information on chardata, see the "IO data" section below.

IO devices

An IO device may be an atom or a PID. In case it is an atom, the atom must be the name of a registered process. In addition, Elixir provides two shortcuts:

:stdio - a shortcut for :standard_io, which maps to the current Process.group_leader/0 in Erlang
:stderr - a shortcut for the named process :standard_error provided in Erlang

IO devices maintain their position, which means subsequent calls to any reading or writing functions will start from the place where the device was last accessed. The position of files can be changed using the :file.position/2 function.

IO data

IO data is a data type that can be used as a more efficient alternative to binaries in certain situations.

A term of type IO data is a binary or a list containing bytes (integers in 0..255) or nested IO data. The type is recursive. Let's see an example of one of the possible IO data representing the binary "hello":

[?h, "el", ["l", [?o]]]

The built-in iodata/0 type is defined in terms of iolist/0. An IO list is the same as IO data but it doesn't allow for a binary at the top level (but binaries are still allowed in the list itself).

Use cases for IO data

IO data exists because often you need to do many append operations on smaller chunks of binaries in order to create a bigger binary. However, in Erlang and Elixir concatenating binaries will copy the concatenated binaries into a new binary.

def email(username, domain) do
  username <> "@" <> domain
end

In this function, creating the email address will copy the username and domain binaries. Now imagine you want to use the resulting email inside another binary:

def welcome_message(name, username, domain) do
  "Welcome #{name}, your email is: #{email(username, domain)}"
end

IO.puts(welcome_message("Meg", "meg", "example.com"))
#=> "Welcome Meg, your email is: meg@example.com"

Every time you concatenate binaries or use interpolation (#{}) you are making copies of those binaries. However, in many cases you don't need the complete binary while you create it, but only at the end to print it out or send it somewhere. In such cases, you can construct the binary by creating IO data:

def email(username, domain) do
  [username, ?@, domain]
end

def welcome_message(name, username, domain) do
  ["Welcome ", name, ", your email is: ", email(username, domain)]
end

IO.puts(welcome_message("Meg", "meg", "example.com"))
#=> "Welcome Meg, your email is: meg@example.com"

Building IO data is cheaper than concatenating binaries. Concatenating multiple pieces of IO data just means putting them together inside a list since IO data can be arbitrarily nested, and that's a cheap and efficient operation. Most of the IO-based APIs, such as :gen_tcp, IO, etc, receive IO data and write it to the socket directly without converting it to binary.

One drawback of IO data is that you can't do things like pattern match on the first part of a piece of IO data like you can with a binary, because you usually don't know the shape of the IO data. In those cases, you may need to convert it to a binary by calling iodata_to_binary/1, which is reasonably efficient since it's implemented natively in C. Other functionality, like computing the length of IO data, can be computed directly on the iodata by calling iodata_length/1.

Chardata

Erlang and Elixir also have the idea of chardata/0. Chardata is very similar to IO data: the only difference is that integers in IO data represent bytes while integers in chardata represent Unicode codepoints. Bytes (byte/0) are integers in the 0..255 range, while Unicode codepoints (char/0) are integers in the range 0..0x10FFFF. The IO module provides the chardata_to_string/1 function for chardata as the "counter-part" of the iodata_to_binary/1 function for IO data.

If you try to use iodata_to_binary/1 on chardata, it will result in an argument error. For example, let's try to put a codepoint that is not representable with one byte, like ?π, inside IO data:

iex> IO.iodata_to_binary(["The symbol for pi is: ", ?π])
** (ArgumentError) argument error

If we use chardata instead, it will work as expected:

iex> IO.chardata_to_string(["The symbol for pi is: ", ?π])
"The symbol for pi is: π"

Link to this section Summary

Types

chardata()

device()

nodata()

Functions

binread(device \\ :stdio, line_or_chars)

Reads from the IO device. The operation is Unicode unsafe.

binstream(device, line_or_bytes)

Converts the IO device into an IO.Stream. The operation is Unicode unsafe.

binwrite(device \\ :stdio, iodata)

Writes iodata to the given device.

chardata_to_string(string)

Converts chardata into a string.

getn(prompt, count \\ 1)

Gets a number of bytes from IO device :stdio.

getn(device, prompt, count)

Gets a number of bytes from the IO device.

gets(device \\ :stdio, prompt)

Reads a line from the IO device.

inspect(item, opts \\ [])

Inspects and writes the given item to the device.

inspect(device, item, opts)

Inspects item according to the given options using the IO device.

iodata_length(iodata)

Returns the size of an IO data.

iodata_to_binary(iodata)

Converts IO data into a binary

puts(device \\ :stdio, item)

Writes item to the given device, similar to write/2, but adds a newline at the end.

read(device \\ :stdio, line_or_chars)

Reads from the IO device.

stream(device, line_or_codepoints)

Converts the IO device into an IO.Stream.

warn(message)

Writes a message to stderr, along with the current stacktrace.

warn(message, stacktrace)

Writes a message to stderr, along with the given stacktrace.

write(device \\ :stdio, chardata)

Writes chardata to the given device.

Link to this section Types

chardata()

Specs

chardata() ::
  String.t() | maybe_improper_list(char() | chardata(), String.t() | [])

device()

Specs

device() :: atom() | pid()

nodata()

Specs

nodata() :: {:error, term()} | :eof

Link to this section Functions

binread(device \\ :stdio, line_or_chars)

Specs

binread(device(), :all | :line | non_neg_integer()) :: iodata() | nodata()

Reads from the IO device. The operation is Unicode unsafe.

The device is iterated by the given number of bytes or line by line if :line is given. Alternatively, if :all is given, then whole device is returned.

It returns:

data - the output bytes
:eof - end of file was encountered
{:error, reason} - other (rare) error condition; for instance, {:error, :estale} if reading from an NFS volume

If :all is given, :eof is never returned, but an empty string in case the device has reached EOF.

Note: do not use this function on IO devices in Unicode mode as it will return the wrong result.

binstream(device, line_or_bytes)

Specs

binstream(device(), :line | pos_integer()) :: Enumerable.t()

Converts the IO device into an IO.Stream. The operation is Unicode unsafe.

An IO.Stream implements both Enumerable and Collectable, allowing it to be used for both read and write.

The device is iterated by the given number of bytes or line by line if :line is given. This reads from the IO device as a raw binary.

Note that an IO stream has side effects and every time you go over the stream you may get different results.

Finally, do not use this function on IO devices in Unicode mode as it will return the wrong result.

binwrite(device \\ :stdio, iodata)

Specs

binwrite(device(), iodata()) :: :ok | {:error, term()}

Writes iodata to the given device.

This operation is meant to be used with "raw" devices that are started without an encoding. The given iodata is written as is to the device, without conversion. For more information on IO data, see the "IO data" section in the module documentation.

Use write/2 for devices with encoding.

Important: do not use this function on IO devices in Unicode mode as it will write the wrong data. In particular, the standard IO device is set to Unicode by default, so writing to stdio with this function will likely result in the wrong data being sent down the wire.

chardata_to_string(string)

Specs

chardata_to_string(chardata()) :: String.t()

Converts chardata into a string.

For more information about chardata, see the "Chardata" section in the module documentation.

In case the conversion fails, it raises an UnicodeConversionError. If a string is given, it returns the string itself.

Examples

iex> IO.chardata_to_string([0x00E6, 0x00DF])
"æß"

iex> IO.chardata_to_string([0x0061, "bc"])
"abc"

iex> IO.chardata_to_string("string")
"string"

getn(prompt, count \\ 1)

Specs

getn(chardata() | String.Chars.t(), pos_integer()) :: chardata() | nodata()

getn(device(), chardata() | String.Chars.t()) :: chardata() | nodata()

Gets a number of bytes from IO device :stdio.

If :stdio is a Unicode device, count implies the number of Unicode code points to be retrieved. Otherwise, count is the number of raw bytes to be retrieved.

See IO.getn/3 for a description of return values.

getn(device, prompt, count)

Specs

getn(device(), chardata() | String.Chars.t(), pos_integer()) ::
  chardata() | nodata()

Gets a number of bytes from the IO device.

If the IO device is a Unicode device, count implies the number of Unicode code points to be retrieved. Otherwise, count is the number of raw bytes to be retrieved.

It returns:

data - the input characters
:eof - end of file was encountered
{:error, reason} - other (rare) error condition; for instance, {:error, :estale} if reading from an NFS volume

gets(device \\ :stdio, prompt)

Specs

gets(device(), chardata() | String.Chars.t()) :: chardata() | nodata()

Reads a line from the IO device.

It returns:

data - the characters in the line terminated by a line-feed (LF) or end of file (EOF)
:eof - end of file was encountered
{:error, reason} - other (rare) error condition; for instance, {:error, :estale} if reading from an NFS volume

Examples

To display "What is your name?" as a prompt and await user input:

IO.gets("What is your name?\n")

inspect(item, opts \\ [])

Specs

inspect(item, keyword()) :: item when item: var

Inspects and writes the given item to the device.

It's important to note that it returns the given item unchanged. This makes it possible to "spy" on values by inserting an IO.inspect/2 call almost anywhere in your code, for example, in the middle of a pipeline.

It enables pretty printing by default with width of 80 characters. The width can be changed by explicitly passing the :width option.

The output can be decorated with a label, by providing the :label option to easily distinguish it from other IO.inspect/2 calls. The label will be printed before the inspected item.

See Inspect.Opts for a full list of remaining formatting options.

Examples

IO.inspect(<<0, 1, 2>>, width: 40)

Prints:

<<0, 1, 2>>

We can use the :label option to decorate the output:

IO.inspect(1..100, label: "a wonderful range")

Prints:

a wonderful range: 1..100

The :label option is especially useful with pipelines:

[1, 2, 3]
|> IO.inspect(label: "before")
|> Enum.map(&(&1 * 2))
|> IO.inspect(label: "after")
|> Enum.sum()

Prints:

before: [1, 2, 3]
after: [2, 4, 6]

inspect(device, item, opts)

Specs

inspect(device(), item, keyword()) :: item when item: var

Inspects item according to the given options using the IO device.

See inspect/2 for a full list of options.

iodata_length(iodata)

Specs

iodata_length(iodata()) :: non_neg_integer()

Returns the size of an IO data.

For more information about IO data, see the "IO data" section in the module documentation.

Inlined by the compiler.

Examples

iex> IO.iodata_length([1, 2 | <<3, 4>>])
4

iodata_to_binary(iodata)

Specs

iodata_to_binary(iodata()) :: binary()

Converts IO data into a binary

The operation is Unicode unsafe.

Notice that this function treats integers in the given IO data as raw bytes and does not perform any kind of encoding conversion. If you want to convert from a charlist to a UTF-8-encoded string, use chardata_to_string/1 instead. For more information about IO data and chardata, see the "IO data" section in the module documentation.

If this function receives a binary, the same binary is returned.

Inlined by the compiler.

Examples

iex> bin1 = <<1, 2, 3>>
iex> bin2 = <<4, 5>>
iex> bin3 = <<6>>
iex> IO.iodata_to_binary([bin1, 1, [2, 3, bin2], 4 | bin3])
<<1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 6>>

iex> bin = <<1, 2, 3>>
iex> IO.iodata_to_binary(bin)
<<1, 2, 3>>

puts(device \\ :stdio, item)

Specs

puts(device(), chardata() | String.Chars.t()) :: :ok

Writes item to the given device, similar to write/2, but adds a newline at the end.

By default, the device is the standard output. It returns :ok if it succeeds.

Examples

IO.puts("Hello World!")
#=> Hello World!

IO.puts(:stderr, "error")
#=> error

read(device \\ :stdio, line_or_chars)

Specs

read(device(), :all | :line | non_neg_integer()) :: chardata() | nodata()

Reads from the IO device.

The device is iterated by the given number of characters or line by line if :line is given. Alternatively, if :all is given, then whole device is returned.

It returns:

data - the output characters
:eof - end of file was encountered
{:error, reason} - other (rare) error condition; for instance, {:error, :estale} if reading from an NFS volume

If :all is given, :eof is never returned, but an empty string in case the device has reached EOF.

stream(device, line_or_codepoints)

Specs

stream(device(), :line | pos_integer()) :: Enumerable.t()

Converts the IO device into an IO.Stream.

An IO.Stream implements both Enumerable and Collectable, allowing it to be used for both read and write.

The device is iterated by the given number of characters or line by line if :line is given.

This reads from the IO as UTF-8. Check out IO.binstream/2 to handle the IO as a raw binary.

Note that an IO stream has side effects and every time you go over the stream you may get different results.

Examples

Here is an example on how we mimic an echo server from the command line:

Enum.each(IO.stream(:stdio, :line), &IO.write(&1))

warn(message)

Specs

warn(chardata() | String.Chars.t()) :: :ok

Writes a message to stderr, along with the current stacktrace.

It returns :ok if it succeeds.

Examples

IO.warn("variable bar is unused")
#=> warning: variable bar is unused
#=>   (iex) evaluator.ex:108: IEx.Evaluator.eval/4

warn(message, stacktrace)

Specs

warn(chardata() | String.Chars.t(), Exception.stacktrace()) :: :ok

Writes a message to stderr, along with the given stacktrace.

This function also notifies the compiler a warning was printed (in case --warnings-as-errors was enabled). It returns :ok if it succeeds.

An empty list can be passed to avoid stacktrace printing.

Examples

stacktrace = [{MyApp, :main, 1, [file: 'my_app.ex', line: 4]}]
IO.warn("variable bar is unused", stacktrace)
#=> warning: variable bar is unused
#=>   my_app.ex:4: MyApp.main/1

write(device \\ :stdio, chardata)

Specs

write(device(), chardata() | String.Chars.t()) :: :ok

Writes chardata to the given device.

By default, the device is the standard output.

Examples

IO.write("sample")
#=> sample

IO.write(:stderr, "error")
#=> error