$ gcc -Wall -o getchar getchar.c

$ gcc -Wall -o read read.c

$ dd ibs=1 count=10 < /dev/zero | od -tx1
10+0 records in
0+1 records out
10 bytes (10 B) copied, 5.0791e-05 s, 197 kB/s
0000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000012

$ dd ibs=1 count=10 < /dev/urandom | od -tx1
10+0 records in
0+1 records out
10 bytes (10 B) copied, 6.4408e-05 s, 155 kB/s
0000000 d6 5a c6 d6 90 55 81 e4 46 8d
0000012

$ dd ibs=1 count=10 < /dev/urandom | od -tx1
10+0 records in
0+1 records out
10 bytes (10 B) copied, 5.6232e-05 s, 178 kB/s
0000000 21 24 7f 56 93 34 09 74 7d b0
0000012

$ time dd ibs=1M count=10 < /dev/zero | ./getchar > /dev/null
10+0 records in
20480+0 records out
10485760 bytes (10 MB) copied, 0.157512 s, 66.6 MB/s

real    0m0.160s
user    0m0.145s
sys     0m0.015s

$ time dd ibs=1M count=10 < /dev/zero | ./read > /dev/null
10+0 records in
20480+0 records out
10485760 bytes (10 MB) copied, 12.5578 s, 835 kB/s

real    0m12.635s
user    0m5.094s
sys     0m7.525s

$