I knew I couldn't use it with read, but I thought I might be find with using select, because the way POP3 works is that the client or server will never send a partial line. I did use a version that worked using sysread(), the downside was that I want to be able to work with data 1 line at a time. I suppose I can use a system where I use sysread to fill a buffer and then use another function to extract a line from the buffer.