Device::SerialPort has the advantage that it provides an extra layer of abstraction, and porting to Windows is easier (Win32::SerialPort). However, if you know your application is staying on a *NIX system, then personally my preference is to do away with that extra layer of abstraction and work with a more native API - I wrote about that here: Lower-Level Serial Port Access on *NIX.

I've used both Device::SerialPort and IO::Termios to write serial loggers - the former here, the latter here (which uses this helper module - warning, not yet really production ready), plus a POE-based logger/server here (again, it's just a beta, although so far it seems to have been running well).

Anyway, as for your question, the docs seem to say that ->input is nonblocking, and ->read is AFAIK blocking. (The indeed somewhat lacking documentation is another reason I prefer the lower-level approach, with IO::Select and similar it is more clear to me what is going on.)

In reply to Re: Serial port - "input" vs "read" by haukex
in thread Serial port - "input" vs "read" by fsonnichsen

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