From: Tanaka Akira <akr@...17n.org>
Date: 2004-03-27T21:48:24+09:00
Subject: Re: non blocking read and thread

In article <Pine.LNX.4.44.0403261105410.15230-100000@fattire.ngdc.noaa.gov>,
  "Ara.T.Howard" <ahoward@fattire.ngdc.noaa.gov> writes:

>> I recommend sysread instead of IO#read with nonblocking mode.
>
> can you please elaborate on this?  why exactly?

Because nonblocking sucks.

(1) nonblocking flag on a fd may be set/unset unexpectedly by other
    process if the fd is shared.
(2) many code is unaware about nonblocking.
    For example:
    (a) Ruby's thread scheduler doesn't assume fds may be nonblocking. [ruby-talk:66196]
    (b) stdio is unaware about nonblocking.
        Especially it is too hard to fix data lost on nonblocking write with stdio.
        [ruby-talk:93917]

Although we can fix Ruby, we cannot fix other programs.
Setting nonblocking flag may cause problems on other process because (1).

See Emacs/SSH case:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=e4df2fdc1f4f4950
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/bug-glibc/2002-08/threads.html#00041
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/bug-glibc/2002-08/threads.html#00186

and DJB's opininon:
http://cr.yp.to/unix/nonblock.html
-- 
Tanaka Akira