Reading from stdin

Question

What are the possible ways for reading user input using read() system call in Unix. How can we read from stdin byte by byte using read()?

Answer 1

You can do something like this to read 10 bytes:

char buffer[10];
read(STDIN_FILENO, buffer, 10);

remember read() doesn't add '\0' to terminate to make it string (just gives raw buffer).

To read 1 byte at a time:

char ch;
while(read(STDIN_FILENO, &ch, 1) > 0)
{
 //do stuff
}

and don't forget to #include <unistd.h>, STDIN_FILENO defined as macro in this file.

There are three standard POSIX file descriptors, corresponding to the three standard streams, which presumably every process should expect to have:

Integer value   Name
       0        Standard input (stdin)
       1        Standard output (stdout)
       2        Standard error (stderr)

So instead STDIN_FILENO you can use 0.

Edit:
In Linux System you can find this using following command:

$ sudo grep 'STDIN_FILENO' /usr/include/* -R | grep 'define'
/usr/include/unistd.h:#define   STDIN_FILENO    0   /* Standard input.  */

Notice the comment /* Standard input. */