From: Reimer Behrends <behrends@...>
Date: 2004-06-20T03:58:18+09:00
Subject: Re: [RCR] IO#readn

Sean O'Dell (sean@celsoft.com) wrote:
[...]
>  I agree, a method called to read n bytes should raise an exception when it 
>  cannot.

Except that the semantics of read() specify that _at most_ n bytes will
be read. There are important cases where you want these semantics, such
as when reading from a non-blocking socket or pipe or when reading a
file in chunks without wanting to bother to find out what exactly the
size of the last chunk will be (which can be impossible if the file is
not seekable).

		Reimer Behrends