Re: [perl #30420] The PERL built-in read command reads more thanone byte

Jon Christensen wrote:
>   I have been using perl for years now and have always been a
> supporter.  However, a recent experience with PERL 5.8.0 on RedHat
> LINUX 3.0AS has left me speachless.  The documentation (and I
> have read a lot of it) for the read() command explicitly states
> that read reads length bytes from a filehandle.  So to read one
> byte you would:
> 
> read(FILEHANDLE,$buf,1)
> 
>   However, in some cases this will actually read multiple bytes.

You're probably using an utf-8 locale, which turns on utf8 handling
on input by default with 5.8.0.

More recent versions of perlfunc for read() state :

               Note the characters: depending on the status of the filehandle,
               either (8-bit) bytes or characters are read.  By default all
               filehandles operate on bytes, but for example if the filehandle
               has been opened with the ":utf8" I/O layer (see "open", and the
               "open" pragma, open), the I/O will operate on UTF-8 encoded
               Unicode characters, not bytes.  Similarly for the ":encoding"
               pragma: in that case pretty much any characters can be read.

• RE: [perl #30420] The PERL built-in read command reads more than one byte by Jon Christensen
• Re: [perl #30420] The PERL built-in read command reads more than one byte by Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes
• Re: [perl #30420] The PERL built-in read command reads more than one byte by Nicholas Clark
• [perl #30420] The PERL built-in read command reads more than one byte by Jon Christensen
• Re: [perl #30420] The PERL built-in read command reads more thanone byte by Nick Ing-Simmons
• Re: [perl #30420] The PERL built-in read command reads more thanone byte by Rafael Garcia-Suarez