In message <1188614575.647228.248640 at k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, mp wrote: > Calling try3() yields the error: > File "./test.py", line 54, in try3 > print os.read(fout.fileno(),256) > OSError: [Errno 35] Resource temporarily unavailable That's what's supposed to happen. That's telling you there are no bytes currently available to be read.