IO#read_nonblock

Reads at most maxlen bytes from ios using the read(2) system call after O_NONBLOCK is set for the underlying file descriptor.

If the optional outbuf argument is present, it must reference a String, which will receive the data. The outbuf will contain only the received data after the method call even if it is not empty at the beginning.

read_nonblock just calls the read(2) system call. It causes all errors the read(2) system call causes: Errno::EWOULDBLOCK, Errno::EINTR, etc. The caller should care such errors.

If the exception is Errno::EWOULDBLOCK or Errno::EAGAIN, it is extended by IO::WaitReadable. So IO::WaitReadable can be used to rescue the exceptions for retrying read_nonblock.

read_nonblock causes EOFError on EOF.

On some platforms, such as Windows, non-blocking mode is not supported on IO objects other than sockets. In such cases, Errno::EBADF will be raised.

If the read byte buffer is not empty, read_nonblock reads from the buffer like readpartial. In this case, the read(2) system call is not called.

When read_nonblock raises an exception kind of IO::WaitReadable, read_nonblock should not be called until io is readable for avoiding busy loop. This can be done as follows.

# emulates blocking read (readpartial).
begin
  result = io.read_nonblock(maxlen)
rescue IO::WaitReadable
  IO.select([io])
  retry
end

Although IO#read_nonblock doesn’t raise IO::WaitWritable. OpenSSL::Buffering#read_nonblock can raise IO::WaitWritable. If IO and SSL should be used polymorphically, IO::WaitWritable should be rescued too. See the document of OpenSSL::Buffering#read_nonblock for sample code.

Note that this method is identical to readpartial except the non-blocking flag is set.

By specifying a keyword argument exception to false, you can indicate that read_nonblock should not raise an IO::WaitReadable exception, but return the symbol :wait_readable instead. At EOF, it will return nil instead of raising EOFError.