stdio EOF

Doug Gwyn gwyn at smoke.ARPA
Thu Sep 8 16:07:11 AEST 1988


In article <13427 at mimsy.UUCP> chris at mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>In article <8422 at smoke.ARPA> gwyn at smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
>>... In fact [stdio] EOF should not be "sticky"; if more data becomes
>>available, as on a terminal, it should be available for subsequent
>>reading.  The 4.2BSD implementation broke this but it might be okay
>>on 4.3BSD.
>I thought this behaviour was added to 4.2BSD to conform to some
>existing standard.

No; it was added because Bill Shannon thought it was a good idea.
I noticed it because it broke several interesting applications.

>What does the dpANS say?  POSIX?

Remember that the C dpANS does not address multitasking issues
(where a file can grow due to other concurrent processes), nor
does it specify much about "terminal" device behavior.  I recall
the 4.2BSD sticky-EOF behavior coming up in dicsussion and not
finding any demurrers when it was labeled "bogus", but I also
doubt that it is explictly ruled "nonconforming".

I don't remember seeing this specific issue addressed by 1003.1.



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