Stdio (stderr) buffering question

Chris Torek chris at mimsy.UUCP
Mon Jun 13 17:27:44 AEST 1988


In article <5027 at sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> hutch at net1.ucsd.edu (Jim Hutchison) writes:
>So how many things break if stderr is line buffered?

Not as much as if it is buffered a la stdout (line if tty, else fully),
but still not nothing.  I change uucp with each new release to make it
line buffered; it requires adding fflush() calls in places so that you
can see send/expect strings in a timely manner.

Note that `tar tvf -' printed its `tv' output to stderr; this was one
of the worst offenders in the unbuffered stderr inefficiency game.  The
4.3BSD tar has been fixed (mostly by BRL) by making its stderr line
buffered.

Chris
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris



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