From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2002-05-09T03:42:30+09:00
Subject: gets and eof?

I have a program that reads input from a socket and displays output on
the terminal.  It exits on end of file.  The loop looks something like:

  loop do
    break if $stdin.eof?
    line = $stdin.gets
    puts "<-- #{line}"
  end

However, when I first wrote it, I instead wrote:

  loop do
    line = $stdin.gets
    break if $stdin.eof?
    puts "<-- #{line}"
  end

The first case works correctly.  The second case does not; when I type a
line, it doesn't show up until the second line is typed.  This happens
whether I am using $stdin or whether I am using a socket (returned by
TCPServer#accept).  Why does this happen in the second case?

Paul