get character without waiting

[Mark Elston, NSI Inc., Edwards AFB CA]

In article <4669 at inews.intel.com>, bhoughto at pima.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
> In article <1991Jun12.001056.24021 at watdragon.waterloo.edu> nkkwan at crocus.uwaterloo.ca writes:
>>
>>How can I check whether there is character waiting in standard input or not? 
>>What I want to do is something like..
>>   
>>If there is a character, then I read it. But if not, I can do something else.
> 
> Y'know, I've often wondered what it was that possessed the
> forgers of unix to name that damn function "select(2)" instead
> of "checkiobuffersforremainingcharacters(2)".

That's great for all of you with "select(2)" in your libraries.  I'm forced to
live with SysVR2 without select()!!

Is there another way????

Mark.
-- 
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elston at edwards-tems.af.mil    | "I know there are people in the world who |
Mark Elston, NSI Inc.         |  do not love their fellow human beings and|
"What business in their right |  I *HATE* people like that..."            |
 mind would want my opinion   |            -Tom Lehrer                    |
 anyway"                      |              on National Brotherhood Week |
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