newbie question

[jeff]

"Richard Brodie" <R.Brodie at rl.ac.uk> wrote in 
news:c5occn$ijq at newton.cc.rl.ac.uk:

> You are missing Krzysztof's point. Even if the string 'kill' is sent,
> TCP does not guarantee that is what you will receive. It is a pure
> stream system and has no concept of records or lines; that isn't likely
> the problem here but sooner or later, you *will* get burnt if you start
> thinking that if 4 characters are sent, then 4 will be received.

how can i be sure i have received the entire string?