1--- 2layout: default 3title: ustdio 4nav_order: 1 5parent: IO 6--- 7<!-- 8© 2020 and later: Unicode, Inc. and others. 9License & terms of use: http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html 10--> 11 12# C: ustdio 13 14This API provides a `<stdio.h>`-like API wrapper around ICU's other [formatting 15and parsing](../format_parse/index.md) APIs. It is meant to ease the transition of adding 16Unicode support to a preexisting applications using stdio. The following is a 17small list of noticable differences between stdio and ICU I/O's ustdio 18implementation. 19 20* Locale specific formatting and parsing is only done with file IO. 21* `u_fstropen` can be used to simulate file IO with strings. This is similar 22 to the iostream API, and it allows locale specific formatting and parsing to 23 be used. 24* This API provides uniform formatting and parsing behavior between platforms 25 (unlike the standard stdio implementations found on various platforms). 26* This API is better suited for text data handling than binary data handling 27 when compared to the typical stdio implementation. 28* You can specify a [Transliterator](../transforms/index.md) while using the 29 file IO. 30* You can specify a file's [codepage](../conversion/converters.md) separately 31 from the codepage. 32