well, what an informative reply.

i had not considered the buffering logic reading before select checks again, but it does seem to simply explain the problem i am having, thankyou.

unfortunately, i cannot provide working code atm, i am at work and this is a little home project, however, in short, i moved over to using io::event which apparently allows me to use <> to read the io::select object as though it were a file handle.

thankyou, it would appear illuminatus has illuminated</P. me ;)