On 2008年7月22日, Cameron Simpson wrote: [...] > Leaving aside the 0.2 => 0 converstion, shouldn't read() raise an > exception if asked for < 1 bytes? Or is there a legitimate use for read(0) > with which I was not previously aware? http://docs.python.org/lib/bltin-file-objects.html read([size]) ... If the size argument is negative or omitted, read all data until EOF is reached. ... John