Re: Reading from an empty file

[Oliver Kroth <oliver.kroth@...>]

Am 05.09.2017 um 15:13 schrieb Shmuel Zeigerman:
> I wonder why the first read from an empty file returns nil rather than 
> an empty string.
> E.g. fp:read(10) --> nil
>
> If the zero-sized file exists then it can be interpreted as a file 
> containing an empty string (IMHO).
If you have a single \n in your file. the first fp:read("*l") will 
return "", the second fp:read("*l") will return nil.
f you read from a file that contains some characters but no \n, you get nil.
So you get a non-nil for all \n-terminated lines.
and a nil for the rest, even if it contains some characters.

To me this is consistent
You may need to call fp:read("*a) if you get nil as result to get a 
final line without \n (which may exist in some text files)
--
Oliver