Where to find struct _IO_FILE

Question

I was looking through /usr/include/stdio.h

and happened to come across the following piece of code.

/* Standard streams.  */

extern struct _IO_FILE *stdin;          /* Standard input stream.  */
extern struct _IO_FILE *stdout;         /* Standard output stream.  */
extern struct _IO_FILE *stderr;         /* Standard error output stream.  */
/* C89/C99 say they're macros.  Make them happy.  */
#define stdin stdin
#define stdout stdout
#define stderr stderr

My question is, where is this stucture struct _IO_FILE declared, i want to see the layout. and also the code mentions

#define stdin stdin

How is this supposed to work?

Answer 1

It's in /usr/include/libio.h (which is included in stdio.h) and struct defintion is:

struct _IO_FILE {
  int _flags;           /* High-order word is _IO_MAGIC; rest is flags. */
#define _IO_file_flags _flags

  /* The following pointers correspond to the C++ streambuf protocol. */
  /* Note:  Tk uses the _IO_read_ptr and _IO_read_end fields directly. */
  char* _IO_read_ptr;   /* Current read pointer */
  char* _IO_read_end;   /* End of get area. */
  char* _IO_read_base;  /* Start of putback+get area. */
  char* _IO_write_base; /* Start of put area. */
  char* _IO_write_ptr;  /* Current put pointer. */
  char* _IO_write_end;  /* End of put area. */
  char* _IO_buf_base;   /* Start of reserve area. */
  char* _IO_buf_end;    /* End of reserve area. */
  /* The following fields are used to support backing up and undo. */
  char *_IO_save_base; /* Pointer to start of non-current get area. */
  char *_IO_backup_base;  /* Pointer to first valid character of backup area */
  char *_IO_save_end; /* Pointer to end of non-current get area. */

  struct _IO_marker *_markers;

  struct _IO_FILE *_chain;

  int _fileno;
#if 0
  int _blksize;
#else
  int _flags2;
#endif
  _IO_off_t _old_offset; /* This used to be _offset but it's too small.  */

#define __HAVE_COLUMN /* temporary */
  /* 1+column number of pbase(); 0 is unknown. */
  unsigned short _cur_column;
  signed char _vtable_offset;
  char _shortbuf[1];

  /*  char* _save_gptr;  char* _save_egptr; */

  _IO_lock_t *_lock;
#ifdef _IO_USE_OLD_IO_FILE
};

I searched for the definition by looking at the preprocessed code:

echo '#include<stdio.h>' | gcc -E -

Answer 2

You can do search in this way:

grep -rn "struct _IO_FILE {" --include="*.h" /usr/include