Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!umd5!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Stdio (stderr) buffering question
Message-ID: <11934@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jun 88 07:27:44 GMT
References: <16124@brl-adm.ARPA> <8063@brl-smoke.ARPA> <5027@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 17

In article <5027@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> hutch@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@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris