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Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)read.2 8.4 (Berkeley) 2/26/94 .\" .TH READ 2 "23 January 1997" GNO "System Calls" .SH NAME .BR read , .BR readv \- read input .SH SYNOPSIS #include .br #include .br #include .sp 1 ssize_t \fBread\fR (int \fId\fR, void *\fIbuf\fR, size_t \fInbytes\fR); .sp 1 ssize_t \fBreadv\fR (int \fId\fR, const struct iovec *\fIiov\fR, int \fIiovcnt\fR); .SH DESCRIPTION .BR read attempts to read .I nbytes of data from the object referenced by the descriptor .I d into the buffer pointed to by .IR buf . .BR readv performs the same action, but scatters the input data into the .I iovcnt buffers specified by the members of the .I iov array: iov[0], iov[1], ..., iov[iovcnt\|\-\|1]. .LP For .BR readv , the .I iovec structure is defined as: .LP .nf struct iovec { void *iov_base; size_t iov_len; }; .fi .LP Each .I iovec entry specifies the base address and length of an area in memory where data should be placed. .BR readv will always fill an area completely before proceeding to the next. .LP On objects capable of seeking, the .BR read starts at a position given by the pointer associated with .I d (see .BR lseek (2)). Upon return from .BR read , the pointer is incremented by the number of bytes actually read. .LP Objects that are not capable of seeking always read from the current position. The value of the pointer associated with such an object is undefined. .LP Upon successful completion, .BR read and .BR readv return the number of bytes actually read and placed in the buffer. The system guarantees to read the number of bytes requested if the descriptor references a normal file that has that many bytes left before the end-of-file, but in no other case. .LP If the file was opened with the GNO-specific flag .BR O_TRANS , then newline translation will occur; any carridge return character (0x0d) read from descriptor .I d will be converted to a line feed (0x0a). .SH RETURN VALUES If successful, the number of bytes actually read is returned. Upon reading end-of-file, zero is returned. Otherwise, a -1 is returned and the global variable .IR errno is set to indicate the error. .SH ERRORS .BR read and .BR readv will succeed unless: .RS .IP \fBEBADF\fR .I D is not a valid file or socket descriptor open for reading. .IP \fBEFAULT\fR .I Buf points outside the allocated address space. .IP \fBEIO\fR An I/O error occurred while reading from the file system. .IP \fBEINTR\fR A read from a slow device was interrupted before any data arrived by the delivery of a signal. .IP \fBEINVAL\fR The pointer associated with .I d was negative. .IP \fBEAGAIN\fR The file was marked for non-blocking I/O, and no data were ready to be read. .RE .LP In addition, .BR readv may return one of the following errors: .RS .IP \fBEINVAL\fR .I Iovcnt was less than or equal to 0, or greater than 16. .IP \fBEINVAL\fR One of the .I iov_len values in the .I iov array was negative. .IP \fBEINVAL\fR The sum of the .I iov_len values in the .I iov array overflowed a 32-bit integer. .RE .SH SEE ALSO .BR dup (2), .BR fcntl (2), .BR open (2), .BR pipe (2), .BR select (2), .BR socket (2), .BR socketpair (2) .SH STANDARDS .BR Read is expected to conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988 (POSIX). .SH HISTORY The .BR readv function call appeared in 4.2BSD. A .BR read function call appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.