read() details

[Simon Kirby]

Just some things I've always wondered about...

Is it safe to assume that when a single read() call of x bytes a file
(the file being locked against other processes appending to it) returns
less than x bytes, the next read() will always return 0?  If so, is it
portable to make such an assumption?

...Or is it always better to make sure read() returns 0 before assuming
EOF, perhaps because the kernel may want to promote contiguous-page
read()s or for some other reason?

On a related note, would there be a win in altering the first read() size
(at the beginning of a read loop) to allow the kernel to serve the
subsequent read requests from contiguous pages?  (This is assuming that
an lseek() happened first which would misalign the further read()s with
page boundaries.)

Simon-

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