Programming :: Clearing Stdin Obtained From Pipe

I have a small program that reads stdin from a pipe using fgets. Now fgets blocks for the first line but after that it will not block.

The code, my_echo.c -
int main(int argc, char **argv) { char buf [2000] ;
char* pc ; printf("hello ") ; while (1)
{ buf[0] = (char) 0 ;
pc = fgets(buf, sizeof(buf), stdin);
if (pc != NULL) printf("%s ",buf); } return 0; }

How its called
* In terminal window 1: ./my_echo < my_fifo
* In terminal window 2: echo "1234" > my_fifo
* In terminal window 1: prints hello then 1234.
* Checking with ksysguard or top shows that my_echo is consuming 40% of CPU time.

Adding a few printf's shows that the gets is not blocking and returns a null pointer.
* In terminal window 2: echo "qwerty" > my_fifo
* In terminal window 1 qwerty prints.
I want a read function that does in fact block so my program does not tie up CPU time, read does not block.