A simple Serial-Non-Blocking read for Arduino

As I shown in another post, the non blocking read over a serial line is a very repetitive jobs for an embedded systems developer or designer. Since Arduino seems to be the prince of embedded systems For The Rest Of Us, I want to publish my version of non blocking read over the serial line for Arduino.

/**
 * @brief 
 * 
 * @param buffer 
 * @param length 
 * @param timeout 
 * @return int 
 */
int readNb(char *buffer, int length, int timeout)
{
  long previousMillis = 0;
  int bread = 0;
  char c;

  previousMillis = millis();
  while ((millis() - previousMillis) & lt; timeout)
  {
    if (Serial.available() > 0)
    {
      c = Serial.read();
      if (bread > length)
      {
        return (-1); // string received is too long
      }
      else
      {
        buffer[bread] = c;
      }
      bread++;
    }
  }
  return (bread);
}

Nothing more!