Non-blocking input on windows, like select in Unix

[Paul Rubin]

Jonathan Fine <jfine at pytex.org> writes:
> My question is this: Under Windows, is it possible
> to read as many bytes as are available from stdout,
> without blocking?

I think Windows implements non-blocking i/o calls.  However the
traditional (to some) Python or Java approach to this problem is
to use separate threads for the reader and writer, and let them block
as needed.