std.file.read implementation contest

[Steven Schveighoffer]

"Sean Kelly" wrote
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Someone mentioned an old bug in std.file.read here:
>>
>> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7xnty/walter_bright_on_porting_d_to_the_mac/ 
>> Two programmers sent in patches for the function. Which is to be 
>> committed and why? (Linux versions shown. Apologies for noisy line 
>> breaks.)
>
> Neither one.  std.read is intended to read the contents of a file in bulk 
> into memory.  If a file size is zero then the size of the data available 
> is either zero (expected case) or unbounded (screwy *nix case).  Streaming 
> operations should be used on unbounded virtual files, not std.read.

Then you have just created for yourself a never ending bug report :)  I 
think reading /proc and /sys files is an essential part of writing scripts 
and useful utilities.  std.file.read is especially useful since most of the 
time these files are very tiny, meant to be read all at once.  If this 
functionality *is* forbidden from std.file.read, then a 
std.file.readUnbounded should still be available.  Complaining that *nix 
isn't pure enough for the likes of D isn't very practical.

I view the usage of fstat to get the file size as being an optimization, not 
a validation of the OS' sanity.

-Steve