From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2005-06-10T17:44:24+09:00
Subject: Re: IO#read

Hi,

In message "Re: IO#read"
    on Fri, 10 Jun 2005 16:07:46 +0900, "Kirill A. Shutemov" <k.shutemov@sam-solutions.net> writes:

|Why does IO#read at the end of file without argument return "", but with a
|interer return nil?

IO#read with length argument tries to read a string, and returns nil
if EOF is met.  Thus it returns nil for this case.  On the other hand,
IO#read without length argument read a string until EOF, so that it
tried to read whole data and zero bytes was read.  That's the reason
it returned an empty string.  As a rule of thumb, IO#read() without
any argument never returns nil.

							matz.