stdin?Q: Whenever I run my program, which reads stdin, from
RHIDE or Bash, it gets EOF indication immediately, without any
input being typed! This program runs okay from the DOS prompt, so
something must be wrong with Bash and RHIDE, yes?
A: This is a known (mis-)behavior of DOS: to clear the EOF
condition of the console device, you need to write something to it. If
during some previous invocation of a program you typed
Ctrl-<Z>, the resulting EOF condition will stick until
something is written to the console device. When the program is run
from the DOS prompt, that "something" is the prompt string printed by
COMMAND.COM. However, RHIDE doesn't print any prompt, and
Bash prints its prompt via the BIOS. So, as soon as you type
Ctrl-<Z>, the console device is stuck in the EOF condition,
and all subsequent invocations of programs that read standard input
immediately get receive EOF and exit. (This problem is not specific to
DJGPP: Norton Commander also exhibits it.)
A work-around is to output something to stdout or stderr
(assuming they both are connected to the console device).