moritz wrote:

Update: BTW this is a bad idea: while (read(FILE, $buf, $recsize) == $recsize) {

However, if you do get a short read, do you really want to perform the unpack?

You can always detect a short read by checking the length of $buf at the end of the loop:

while (...) {
}
if (length($buf) > 0 && length($buf) < $recsize) {
  # last read was short
}
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When reading from a disk file (that no one else is writing to), the only place you'll get a short read is at the end of the file. This isn't true for a pipe or a socket where there are more circumstances that will give you a short read before you've reached eof.