End-of-file

In computing, end-of-file (commonly abbreviated EOF) is a condition in a computer operating system where no more data can be read from a data source. The data source is usually called a file or stream. In general, the EOF is either determined when the reader returns null as seen in Java's BufferedReader, or sometimes people will manually insert an EOF character of their choosing to signal when the file has ended.

In the C Standard Library, the character reading functions such as getchar return a value equal to the symbolic value (macro) EOF to indicate that an end-of-file condition has occurred. The actual value of EOF is system-dependent (but is commonly -1, such as in glibc) and is unequal to any valid character code. Block-reading functions return the number of bytes read, and if this is fewer than asked for, then the end of file was reached or an error occurred (checking of errno or dedicated function, such as ferror is often required to determine which).

Input from a terminal never really "ends" (unless the device is disconnected), but it is useful to enter more than one "file" into a terminal, so a key sequence is reserved to indicate end of input. In UNIX the translation of the keystroke to EOF is performed by the terminal driver, so a program does not need to distinguish terminals from other input files. By default, the driver converts a Control-D character at the start of a line into an end-of-file indicator. To insert an actual Control-D (ASCII 04) character into the input stream, the user precedes it with a "quote" command character (usually Control-V). AmigaDOS is similar but uses Control-\ instead of Control-D.

In Microsoft's DOS and Windows (and in CP/M and many DEC operating systems), reading from the terminal will never produce an EOF. Instead, programs recognize that the source is a terminal (or other "character device") and interpret a given reserved character or sequence as an end-of-file indicator; most commonly this is an ASCII Control-Z, code 26. Some MS-DOS programs, including parts of the Microsoft MS-DOS shell (COMMAND.COM) and operating-system utility programs (such as EDLIN), treat a Control-Z in a text file as marking the end of meaningful data, and/or append a Control-Z to the end when writing a text file. This was done for two reasons:

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