feof status (was: Re: [Python-Dev] Rehabilitating fgets)

[Eric S. Raymond]

Tim Peters <tim_one@email.msn.com>:
> > [Tim suggests to use fgets(), preparing the buffer with non-null
> > bytes, and searching for a null byte from the right.]

No, I haven't forgotten about the curses autoconfig stuff.  But...

This mess reminds me.  For some work I'm doing right now, it would be
very useful if there were a way to query the end-of-file status of a
file descriptor without actually doing a read.

I don't see this ability anywhere in the 2.0 API.  Questions:

1. Am I missing something obvious?

2. If the answer to 1 is that I am not, in fact, being a dumbass, what
   is the right way to support this?  The obvious alternatives are an 
   eof member (analogous to the existing `closed' member, or an eof()
   method.  I favor the latter.

3. If we agree on a design, I'm willing to implement this at least for
   Unix.  Should be a small project.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of
limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and
great nations.
	-- David Friedman