Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: reliable reads from pipes
Message-ID: <13483@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 5 Aug 90 02:17:27 GMT
References: <1990Aug3.233256.29659@NCoast.ORG>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 7

In article <1990Aug3.233256.29659@NCoast.ORG> atul@NCoast.ORG (Atul Parulekar) writes:
>but sometimes it does not print out the full directory name (prints (/) ...

"pwd" doesn't necessarily print its entire output in a single atomic write(),
so your read() on the pipe may return only a portion of what "pwd" will
eventually have written.  The simplest solution is to read until you see a
new-line, which will be the last thing output by "pwd".