hello guys,

I have got a pecuiliar problem in hand. There, I have to read data via serial port from a communication device and am given option to use any OS and my choice is Linux of course. I dont know what protocols that device uses except that it simply sends data @ 9600 bps with 1 stop and no parity. But I have to read its data somehow. I want to know if there is any command to read data from a serial port (though writing to it is as simple as "echo a.vi > /dev/tty--"). Moreover, its not fixed when the device will send the data (i guess i'd need to use the for loop...). pls do reply.

You can use minicom which is a terminal program to see what the device transmits. As long as the device transmits regular ASCII characters (A-Z 1-9) minicom will work. For anything else your probably going to have to write your on application.

well...thanks...i was really looking for a command like echo or something else or like read....anyway...i have to develop the program..but is there any inbuilt unix command to read the data from serial ports...

You can try
/dev/ttyS0/ > logfile
or
tail -f /dev/ttyS0 >logfile

I've never been able to get to work for me.