Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!GYRE.UMD.EDU!chris
From: chris@GYRE.UMD.EDU (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  Stdio over sockets
Message-ID: <8906260417.AA25619@gyre.umd.edu>
Date: 26 Jun 89 04:17:37 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 16

Sockets do not return errors from fstat calls.  The result of an
fstat is `the right thing'.

What is probably happening is that your program(s) do(es) not use
fflush.  If you write to a terminal device, C (not Unix: it says
to do it this way in the proposed C standard) stdio by default buffers
text up to the first newline.  Once you send a newline to a stdio
stream, the text (including the newline) is printed immediately.
Devices that are not terminals, however, get fully-buffered: text is
not printed until a `sufficiently large amount' accumulates, or until
the C program uses the fflush() stdio routine.

Any good C book should explain this, at least if it was written after
the first few drafts of the proposed standard were issued.

Chris