Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!BRL.MIL!moss
From: moss@BRL.MIL ("Gary S. Moss", VLD/VMB)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re:  HELP: Low level terminal I/O
Message-ID: <8908011000.aa22873@VMB.BRL.MIL>
Date: 1 Aug 89 14:00:01 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 25

[Jim Barton writes]
< Several others have posted valid solutions to this problem, but there is one
< valid one which is portable (although somewhat ugly) and used by many
< programs out there.
<
< You have the VMIN and VTIME settings backwards.  The proper way to do
< this is to set:
< 
<	term.c_cc[VMIN] = 0;
< 	term.c_cc[VTIME] = 1;

I don't believe that this is portable, except on System V based machines.
It will work on some BSD-based systems, but not all, especially older
implementations.  For example, here is an excerpt from the termio(4V) manual
page on my Sun (Release 3.2):

"    3.   The MIN and TIME values supported by other implementations
          can be set, but this has no effect on the terminal driver.
          The driver behaves as if MIN were 1 and TIME were 0."

Basic BSD systems use the sgtty structures rather than termio; though later
versions have some compatibility with System V built in, you may not get
the behavior you want.

-moss