read(2) System Calls Manual

read(2)

NAME
read - read from a file descriptor

LIBRARY
Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>

ssize_t read(int fd, void buf[.count], size_t count);

DESCRIPTION
read() attempts to read up to count bytes from file descriptor fd into the
buffer starting at buf.

On files that support seeking, the read operation commences at the file
offset, and the file offset is incre‐
mented by the number of bytes read. If the file offset is at or past the
end of file, no bytes are read, and
read() returns zero.

If count is zero, read() may detect the errors described below. In the
absence of any errors, or if read()
does not check for errors, a read() with a count of 0 returns zero and has
no other effects.

According to POSIX.1, if count is greater than SSIZE_MAX, the result is

implementation-defined; see NOTES for
the upper limit on Linux.

RETURN VALUE
On success, the number of bytes read is returned (zero indicates end of
file), and the file position is ad‐
vanced by this number. It is not an error if this number is smaller than
the number of bytes requested; this
may happen for example because fewer bytes are actually available right
now (maybe because we were close to
end-of-file, or because we are reading from a pipe, or from a terminal), or
because read() was interrupted by a
signal. See also NOTES.

On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error. In this

case, it is left unspecified whether
the file position (if any) changes.

ERRORS
EAGAIN The file descriptor fd refers to a file other than a socket and has
been marked nonblocking (O_NON‐
BLOCK), and the read would block. See open(2) for further details on
the O_NONBLOCK flag.

EAGAIN or EWOULDBLOCK
The file descriptor fd refers to a socket and has been marked
nonblocking (O_NONBLOCK), and the read
would block. POSIX.1-2001 allows either error to be returned for
this case, and does not require these
 constants to have the same value, so a portable application should
check for both possibilities.

EBADF fd is not a valid file descriptor or is not open for reading.

EFAULT buf is outside your accessible address space.

EINTR The call was interrupted by a signal before any data was read; see
signal(7).

EINVAL fd is attached to an object which is unsuitable for reading; or

the file was opened with the O_DIRECT
flag, and either the address specified in buf, the value specified in
count, or the file offset is not
suitably aligned.

EINVAL fd was created via a call to timerfd_create(2) and the wrong

size buffer was given to read(); see
timerfd_create(2) for further information.

EIO I/O error. This will happen for example when the process is in a
background process group, tries to
read from its controlling terminal, and either it is ignoring or
blocking SIGTTIN or its process group
is orphaned. It may also occur when there is a low-level I/O error
while reading from a disk or tape.
A further possible cause of EIO on networked filesystems is when an
advisory lock had been taken out on
the file descriptor and this lock has been lost. See the Lost locks
section of fcntl(2) for further de‐
tails.

EISDIR fd refers to a directory.

Other errors may occur, depending on the object connected to fd.

STANDARDS
SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.

NOTES
The types size_t and ssize_t are, respectively, unsigned and signed integer
data types specified by POSIX.1.

On Linux, read() (and similar system calls) will transfer at most

0x7ffff000 (2,147,479,552) bytes, returning
the number of bytes actually transferred. (This is true on both 32-bit and
64-bit systems.)

On NFS filesystems, reading small amounts of data will update the timestamp
only the first time, subsequent
calls may not do so. This is caused by client side attribute caching,
because most if not all NFS clients
leave st_atime (last file access time) updates to the server, and client
side reads satisfied from the client's
cache will not cause st_atime updates on the server as there are no
server-side reads. UNIX semantics can be
obtained by disabling client-side attribute caching, but in most situations
this will substantially increase
server load and decrease performance.
BUGS
According to POSIX.1-2008/SUSv4 Section XSI 2.9.7 ("Thread Interactions with
Regular File Operations"):

All of the following functions shall be atomic with respect to

each other in the effects specified in
POSIX.1-2008 when they operate on regular files or symbolic links: ...

Among the APIs subsequently listed are read() and readv(2). And among the
effects that should be atomic across
threads (and processes) are updates of the file offset. However, before
Linux 3.14, this was not the case: if
two processes that share an open file description (see open(2)) perform a
read() (or readv(2)) at the same
time, then the I/O operations were not atomic with respect updating the
file offset, with the result that the
reads in the two processes might (incorrectly) overlap in the blocks of data
that they obtained. This problem
was fixed in Linux 3.14.

SEE ALSO
close(2), fcntl(2), ioctl(2), lseek(2), open(2), pread(2), readdir(2),
readlink(2), readv(2), select(2),
write(2), fread(3)

Linux man-pages 6.03 2022-12-04

read(2)