--- /n/sources/plan9/sys/man/5/read Sun Dec 2 23:42:24 2007 +++ /sys/man/5/read Wed Aug 17 00:00:00 2016 @@ -48,7 +48,14 @@ The .I count field in the reply indicates the number of bytes returned. -This may be less than the requested amount. +This may be less than the requested amount, +if the requested amount is not all currently available. +However, servers should try to avoid returning less data than +requested if possible. +In particular, merely crossing a storage block boundary is not +sufficient reason to return a short count; +.IR exec (2) +in particular relies upon this property. If the .I offset field is greater than or equal to the number of bytes in the file,