I don't think getline() is a generic enough interface, especially for a utility used to introduce new lines.
Consider for example you want 80x10 lines of "y", you could do this previously with: $ yes | tr -d '\n' | fold -w 80 | head -n 10 While now fold will just consume all of memory. Instead you might fread() to an IO_BUFSIZE buffer? cheers, Padraig
