Empty or "flush" a file descriptor without read()?

Posted by Teddy on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Teddy
Published on 2009-12-17T19:56:24Z Indexed on 2010/06/02 4:33 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 225

Filed under:

file-descriptor

(Note: This is not a question of how to flush a write(). This is the other end of it, so to speak.)

Is it possible to empty a file descriptor that has data to be read in it without having to read() it? You might not be interested in the data, and reading it all would therefore waste space and cycles you might have better uses for.

If it is not possible in POSIX, do any operating systems have any non-portable ways to do this?

UPDATE: Please note that I'm talking about file descriptors, not streams.

Related posts about read

Unable to transfer data to or from mounted hard drive

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
So usually i'm good at sorting out issues. But this one has me at a loss! This issues has occured since upgrading my ubuntu so this was workingg prior. I use mounted hard drives to manage my downloads which are then copied over accordingly by a python based app. I found it was having issues with… >>> More
How to convert binary read/write to non-binary read/write in C++

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have some C++ code from somewhere that reads and writes data in binary format. I want to see what it's reading and writing in the file, so I want to convert it's binary read and write to non-binary read and write. Also, when I convert the binary write to non-binary write, I want it to still be… >>> More
Making ehcache read-write for test code and read-only for production code

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I would like to annotate many of my Hibernate entities that contain reference data and/or configuration data with @Cache(usage = CacheConcurrencyStrategy.READ_ONLY) However, my JUnit tests are setting up and tearing down some of this reference/configuration data using the Hibernate entities. Is… >>> More
Can't mark email read with InterIMAP, folder is read-only

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm trying to mark emails read (/SEEN) with InterIMAP, but this doesn't work. I stepped through the code with debugger, and found out that the response from mail server is "IMAP0078 OK Store ignored with read-only mailbox.", which pretty much tells me why it doesn't work. But it looks like there's… >>> More
Trying to read FormsAuthentication tickets to read in other areas of site

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, NOTE: I have included 3 links in here to my localhost areas but could not submit the post so I seperetaed them with a space character so it would post on stackoverflow. I currently have 2 ASP.NET MVC apps in my solution. First I run the first one by setting it to be startup project. It goes… >>> More

Developer IT