[Haskell-cafe] ptys and hGetContent problem

[Richard O'Keefe]

On Mar 9, 2010, at 9:35 AM, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:

>> And further...
>> If I do want to use an interactive program which needs input, how  
>> do I
>> send ctrl-d or ctrl-c?
>> tail -f needs ctrl-c (or I need to kill the process)
>
> You want Ctrl-d in Unix-based OSs and Ctrl-z in Windows:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_File .  Ctrl-c kills a program.

The statement about UNIX is not quite right.
UNIX has *NO FIXED END-OF-FILE CHARACTER*.
Strictly speaking, it doesn't have an end-of-file character at all.
What the UNIX terminal driver (and interfaces that emulate it) has
is a "send this line now with no terminator" character.
	abcd<EOF>	sends "abcd" to the program sans \n
	ab<EOF>		sends "ab" to the program sans \n
	<EOF>		sends "" to the program
Program does
	n = read(0, buffer, sizeof buffer);
User types
	ab<EOF>
buffer gets "ab", n gets 2.
Program does
	if (n == 0) handle_eof();
which does nothing.
Program calls read again,
User types
	<EOF>
buffer gets no data, n gets 0,
program tests n against 0 and goes off to do the EOF thing.

So the <EOF> character *only* means <EOF> when nothing precedes
it on the current line.

Why do I write <EOF> rather than ^D?  Because nothing in UNIX
anywhere says that <EOF> *has* to be ^D, it's just a default.
Back in the old V6 days, I saw no more reason to stick with
that default than I saw to stick with the default of '#' for
character erase and '@' for line kill.  I've been using ^Z
for <EOF> in UNIX longer than Windows (or DOS before it) has
_existed_.

If you want to know what character to send for end-of-file
when communicating with a UNIX system, use stty(1) to find
out what the <EOF> character actually is.  Insisting on ^D
is not just wrong, it's rude.