I am attempting to 'wrap' std::cin such that all 'blocking' occurs in a dedicated 'cin' thread. This is required because in a cooperatively scheduled thread, no fiber can call cin and block. So I went about attempting a boost::iostreams::source: class cin_source : public boost::iostreams::source { streamsize read( char* s, streamsize n ) { if( n == 0 ) return n; auto r = std::cin.readsome(s,n); if( r <= 0 ) { // post read request to another thread. // cooperatively wait for it to finish... return n; } return r; } }; The problem I have is that this code causes read to be called with 'n == 0'; boost::iostreams::stream<cin_source> my_cin; char buf[100]; my_cin.read( buf, 100 ); It doesn't matter how I attempt to read from the stream, n always equals 0. What am I doing wrong? Dan