=over

=item read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET

=item read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH

Attempts to read LENGTH I<characters> of data into variable SCALAR
from the specified FILEHANDLE.  Returns the number of characters
actually read, C<0> at end of file, or undef if there was an error.
SCALAR will be grown or shrunk to the length actually read.  If SCALAR
needs growing, the new bytes will be zero bytes.  An OFFSET may be
specified to place the read data into some other place in SCALAR than
the beginning.  The call is actually implemented in terms of either
Perl's or system's fread() call.  To get a true read(2) system call,
see C<sysread>.

Note the I<characters>: depending on the status of the filehandle,
either (8-bit) bytes or characters are read.  By default all
filehandles operate on bytes, but for example if the filehandle has
been opened with the C<:utf8> I/O layer (see L</open>, and the C<open>
pragma, L<open>), the I/O will operate on characters, not bytes.

=back