read
read - fixed-length buffered input from a filehandle
read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET
read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH
Attempts to read LENGTH bytes of data into variable SCALAR from the
specified FILEHANDLE. Returns the number of bytes actually read, or
undef if there was an error. SCALAR will be grown or shrunk to the
length actually read. An OFFSET may be specified to place the read
data at some other place than the beginning of the string. This call
is actually implemented in terms of stdio's fread call. To get a true
read system call, see
sysread()
.