From: "Ara.T.Howard" <ahoward@...>
Date: 2004-06-20T05:43:19+09:00
Subject: Re: [RCR] IO#readn

On Sat, 19 Jun 2004, Reimer Behrends wrote:

> 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

exactly.  if don't like the way it works now, try writing code which reads
from network socket using a read(n) which throws exceptions.  THAT will be
ugly...

-a
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