I'm not quite sure what you need this for, but for interoperability reasons like this you might think of a different way of trying to do what it is you're trying to do. The 'eof' function is system-independent and looks literally for the end of a file stream. If you're trying to build an interactive feature into your script that depends on an EOF, you might consider looking instead for a blank line or a '.' on a line by itself (a la sendmail). Just an idea...