Table of Contents

# $EPIC: read.txt,v 1.3 2007/06/05 03:56:39 jnelson Exp $

Synopsis:

$read(<fd> [<length>])

Technical:

This function reads data from an open file. The value <fd> must have been previously returned by the open function. If <length> is given it will read and return that number of bytes from the file. If no <length> is given, it will read and return the next line of text from the file.

If <length> is given, it is considered a binary read, and the return value will be encoded with the CTCP transform, which guarantees you can send the string over irc, or assign it to a variable. You can use xform to convert this data into another format.

The function will return the empty string if <fd> is not a value previously returned by open or if the file has reached EOF, or if there was an error. Use isfilevalid, eof or ferror to determine between these possibilities.

Returns:

Data read from file, or nothing on error. Binary data reads will be CTCP encoded.

Examples:

$read(4)                           returns next line from fd 4
$read(4 30)                        returns next 30 bytes from fd 4