How does a program detect the end of stdin input?

Question

There are several ways of providing stdin input to a program.

When using here-document, we specify a delimiter to signal the end of stdin input:
```
<<[−]word
here-document
delimiter
```
Why do we need to explicitly specify the end of stdin input?
When using here string, there is no extra effort to signal the end of stdin input:
```
<<< word
```
How does the program knows the end of stdin input?
When using redirection from a file to stdin, there is no extra effort to signal the end of stdin input. How does the program knows the end of stdin input?
When using pipe to direct stdout output from another program to the stdin input of the program, there is no extra effort to signal the end of stdin input? How does the program knows the end of stdin input?
In some programs, such as bc, whenever you enter an arithmetic expression and hit return, it will takes in the expression as stdin input and output the evaluated result. In such case, is each line ended by return considered a whole stdin input, or are all the lines typed from starting bc till exiting bc considered a stdin input?
What is the general principle that a program knows how to detect the end of stdin input?

When do we need to specify the end of stdin input explicitly like for here-document, and when do we need not?

Are they program-dependent, or program-independent?

See http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/read.html — Jeff Schaller, Mar 01 '16 at 01:08
Happily recall a sibling question http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/16333/how-to-signal-the-end-of-stdin-input-in-bash# — Tim, Mar 03 '16 at 18:23

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 01 '16 at 01:10

2

This depends on the specific system calls a process uses; read(2) on a file descriptor returns 0 on end-of-file, while stream I/O will probably use the feof(3) call. Digging around with strace may be necessary to see exactly what some higher-level function like getline(3) or specific application is doing under the hood, but most things will probably boil down to read(2) or feof(3).

The heredoc end-label is completely optional in a shell script (though is necessary if other code will follow).

answered Mar 01 '16 at 01:10

thrig

34,938

Thanks. Is feof(3) implemented based on read(2) to detect eof? – Tim Mar 01 '16 at 04:03
@Tim - fopen, fread, feof, etc. are library functions implementing stream I/O. These are built on top of the open, read, etc. I/O system calls. – DoxyLover Mar 01 '16 at 05:57
@Doxy I knew it, so I asked if feof(3) detects eof by being implemented based on read(2)? – Tim Mar 01 '16 at 06:14
Effectively yes. More specifically, fread() calls read() which sets a flag in the stream data structures. Feof() returns that flag. – DoxyLover Mar 01 '16 at 07:51

How does a program detect the end of stdin input?

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