'\" '\" Copyright (c) 1993 The Regents of the University of California. '\" Copyright (c) 1994-1996 Sun Microsystems, Inc. '\" '\" See the file "license.terms" for information on usage and redistribution '\" of this file, and for a DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES. '\" '\" RCS: @(#) $Id: gets.n,v 1.2 2001/09/14 01:42:21 zlaski Exp $ '\" .so man.macros .TH gets n 7.5 Tcl "Tcl Built-In Commands" .BS '\" Note: do not modify the .SH NAME line immediately below! .SH NAME gets \- Read a line from a channel .SH SYNOPSIS \fBgets \fIchannelId\fR ?\fIvarName\fR? .BE .SH DESCRIPTION .PP This command reads the next line from \fIchannelId\fR, returns everything in the line up to (but not including) the end-of-line character(s), and discards the end-of-line character(s). If \fIvarName\fR is omitted the line is returned as the result of the command. If \fIvarName\fR is specified then the line is placed in the variable by that name and the return value is a count of the number of characters returned. .PP If end of file occurs while scanning for an end of line, the command returns whatever input is available up to the end of file. If \fIchannelId\fR is in nonblocking mode and there is not a full line of input available, the command returns an empty string and does not consume any input. If \fIvarName\fR is specified and an empty string is returned in \fIvarName\fR because of end-of-file or because of insufficient data in nonblocking mode, then the return count is -1. Note that if \fIvarName\fR is not specified then the end-of-file and no-full-line-available cases can produce the same results as if there were an input line consisting only of the end-of-line character(s). The \fBeof\fR and \fBfblocked\fR commands can be used to distinguish these three cases. .SH "SEE ALSO" eof(n), fblocked(n) .SH KEYWORDS blocking, channel, end of file, end of line, line, nonblocking, read