overheard a fun C history question i don't know the answer to: why is it `FILE *`, as opposed to `struct file`, `file_t`, or any of the other UNIX/C standard library conventions
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@joe I have not verified, but that may have originated in Mike Leak’s portable C library, the immediate ancestor of stdio. That would be where I'd check first. A recent discussion:
https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2026-May/thread.html#33698
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@thalia if i'm reading this right, the original printf/scanf just looked at their first argument and guessed whether it's a format string or file pointer? 😱
![These two routines, print for output and scan for input, permit simple translation to and from character representations of numerical quantities. They also allow generation or interpretation of formatted lines.
PRINTF ([fd,] control-string, arg1, arg2, ...)
PRINTF ([-1, output-string, ] control-string, arg1, arg2,....)](https://cdn.masto.host/fduriansoftwarecom/media_attachments/files/117/317/527/023/657/356/original/1a9070c5f53307de.png)
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