Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!pa.dec.com!granite.pa.dec.com!mellon From: mellon@nigiri.pa.dec.com (Ted Lemon) Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix Subject: Re: /dev/xcons Message-ID: Date: 25 Jun 91 19:33:41 GMT References: <22637@cbmvax.commodore.com> Sender: news@pa.dec.com (News) Distribution: comp Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Lines: 15 In-Reply-To: trost@reed.edu's message of 25 Jun 91 01:16:37 GMT >A more compelling argument is that we use "xterm -e tail -f >/dev/xcons" to redirect our console output, and it works fine. This >is Ultrix 4.1, though -- maybe somebody "fixed" something (somehow, >getting, EISPIPE *does* make sense...). It seems to me that just a ``cat /dev/xcons'' would work better. Cat does blocking reads, so if there's no data, it will block until data is available, rather than waking up once a second to check again. Actually, there's a good chance that tail -f works this way too, since it probably doesn't go into the 1-second sleep mode until it reads zero bytes at the end of the file. If there's nothing to read from /dev/xcons, the read would just block until something came out. _MelloN_