According to "help read":
Options:
-n nchars return after reading NCHARS characters rather
than waiting
for a newline, but honor a delimiter if fewer than NCHARS
characters are read before the delimiter
Exit Status:
The return code is zero, unless end-of-file is encountered,
read times out,
or an invalid file descriptor is supplied as the argument
to -u.
If read is invoked with the -n or -N options, then given an EOF, it
returns with a zero exit status.
In addition, if it is invoked with -n 3, for example, then given EOF for
one of the first 2 characters, it still waits for all 3 characters.
I am running the most recent Arch (up to date as of 7/26/13) on a 64-bit
machine.
Arch package version: 4.2.045-4
$BASH_VERSION: 4.2.45(2)-release
Is it possible that this can be fixed? Any suggestions for a work-around
if it can't?
Peter Olson
