End of File(EOF) of Standard input stream (stdin)

Question

Does stdin has any EOF? For e.g - If i start reading from stdin using fread/read then when the following loop will end?

while ((c = read(0, buffer, BUFSIZ)) > 0) {
    .
    .
    .
}

If the solution of above is no the is there any way of added EOF in the stdin?

Answer 1

I have never programmed C in windows so I can't tell you but in bash, the program will get an EOF when you type end of data (Ctrl+D)

Answer 2

Speaking about EOF in stdin: when you redirect input from file, e.g.:

program <input.txt

the file already has an EOF, so this is not a problem. In console you can simulate EOF flag. In UNIX systems it is Ctrl+D, in Windows Ctrl+Z. When you type this in the console, program will behave like it has just reached end of input file.

---

Edit

According to a question asked by OP:

So does it means that stdin don't have EOF and we have to insert them manually using Ctrl+Z or Ctrl+D?

Actually -- yes. One may consider stdin (not redirected, but taken from the console) as infinite file -- no one can tell where does it end. The end of input file, where input ist stdin, must be told literally by Ctrl+D or Ctrl+Z.

Answer 3

The way to test for EOF is to check the return value of fread, and then use feof:

while( fread( ... ) ) {    // loop so long as fread does not return zero
    // do something
}

if ( feof( stdin ) ) {
   // read failed because of EOF
}
else {
   // some other error
}

Answer 4

Your solution is tagged C++, so here's some C++.

std::string lols;
while(!(std::cin >> lols).eof()) { // This loop will end when EOF is reached
    // Process string
}

Answer 5

while ((c = read(0, buffer, BUFSIZ)) > 0) {

You don't say the type of c but using that name implies that it's a char. Note that the EOF value for iosteams is an (int) -1. Storing that into an unsigned char will get you a value of 255 which will not match EOF.