From: Harry Ohlsen <harryo@...>
Date: 2001-08-06T06:16:35+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19177] Strange problem with FILE#eof

I posted a question here yesterday regarding what I thought was buffered 
output, but it turns out it was actually IO#eof not returning until I'd 
typed something.

The code originally looked like ...

   while !$stdin.eof
      $stderr.print "-> "
      line = $stdin.gets
      #Process line
   end

and I thought the print was being buffered.  However, after trying lots of 
ways to flush the output, I eventually thought "I wonder if the eof() call 
isn't returning".  Sure enough, it works if I change the code to ...

   while true
      $stderr.print "-> "

      if (line = $stdin.gets) == nil
          break
      end

      #Process line
   end

Can someone tell me why the call to $stdin.eof would hang waiting for me to 
type something?  That doesn't make sense to me.