Read the next line from the file specified by fileid into memory at the address c-addr. At most u1 characters are read. Up to two implementation-defined line-terminating characters may be read into memory at the end of the line, but are not included in the count u2. The line buffer provided by c-addr should be at least u1+2 characters long.
If the operation succeeded, flag is true and ior is zero. If a line terminator was received before u1 characters were read, then u2 is the number of characters, not including the line terminator, actually read (0 <= u2 <= u1). When u1 = u2 the line terminator has yet to be reached.
If the operation is initiated when the value returned by FILE-POSITION is equal to the value returned by FILE-SIZE for the file identified by fileid, flag is false, ior is zero, and u2 is zero. If ior is non-zero, an exception occurred during the operation and ior is the implementation-defined I/O result code.
An ambiguous condition exists if the operation is initiated when the value returned by FILE-POSITION is greater than the value returned by FILE-SIZE for the file identified by fileid, or if the requested operation attempts to read portions of the file not written.
At the conclusion of the operation, FILE-POSITION returns the next file position after the last character read.
Standard Programs may not depend on the presence of any such terminator sequence in the buffer.
A typical line-oriented sequential file-processing algorithm might look like:
READ-LINE needs a separate end-of-file flag because empty (zero-length) lines are a routine occurrence, so a zero-length line cannot be used to signify end-of-file.