Re: Why does "mapfile -d delim" (delim != '\n') use unbuffered read?

[Chet Ramey]

On 5/2/21 9:51 AM, Koichi Murase wrote:
> Maybe I'm asking a stupid question, but, as in the subject, why does
> the builtin "mapfile -d delim" use unbuffered read when delim != '\n'?

It's the shell being careful in the general case. You need to guarantee
behavior in all of the cases where read(2) will not return until it sees
a newline.

>   Can we use buffered read for seekable file descriptors the same as
> the `delim == '\n'' case?

You should be able to, yes.


> This treatment of `mapfile' for "delim != '\n'" exists since the
> mapfile delimiter is first introduced by commit 25a0eacfe "commit
> bash-20140625 snapshot". Would it be a problem to change to the
> buffered read also for non-LF delimiters? If we could remove the above
> two lines (i.e., if (delim != '\n') unbuffered_read = 1;), I'd be very
> happy...

Try it out and see.

Chet
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/