Empty or "flush" a file descriptor without read()?

Posted by Teddy on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Teddy
Published on 2009-12-17T19:56:24Z Indexed on 2010/06/02 4:33 UTC
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file-descriptor

(Note: This is not a question of how to flush a write(). This is the other end of it, so to speak.)

Is it possible to empty a file descriptor that has data to be read in it without having to read() it? You might not be interested in the data, and reading it all would therefore waste space and cycles you might have better uses for.

If it is not possible in POSIX, do any operating systems have any non-portable ways to do this?

UPDATE: Please note that I'm talking about file descriptors, not streams.

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