If it makes you feel better, calling read() on a TCP socket is basically the same as calling read() on a file in a file system. In both cases, you can always en

If it makes you feel better, calling read() on a TCP socket is basically the same as calling read() on a file in a file system. In both cases, you can always end up reading less than you expected, and you always must check how much you actually read. In practice, this means that calls to read() for both should always be in a loop.