Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Sysv pipes/FIFO's & blocking
Message-ID: <10848@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 28 Aug 89 07:54:43 GMT
References: <9348@chinet.chi.il.us>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 15

In article <9348@chinet.chi.il.us> les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
>What is supposed to happen under sysV if a pipe or FIFO contains
>3 characters and a read() requests 4 characters?

read() returns 3 characters in such a case.

>What about fread()?

fread() will loop until it acquires an entire bufferful of data (typically
512 or 1024 bytes), or EOF is detected (a 0 return from read()), or an I/O
error occurs (-1 return from read()).

>Is it documented anywhere?

Yes.