On 4/23/20 4:39 PM, Dale R. Worley wrote:
Andreas Schwab <sch...@linux-m68k.org> writes:
See stdbuf(1).
The limitation(s) of stdbuf are: It can only be applied to the standard
I/O streams. It doesn't affect statically-linked executables. It only
applies to a single executable, so if the command is a shell function or
script, or creates subprocesses, it doesn't affect them.
If you want to define an environment variable for affecting stdout
buffering, you can. (Good luck getting any libc to implement the support
you're imagining: libc authors are *very* conservative about
everything.) But whether or not you have this environment variable, you
don't need special bash syntax to set it: you can just prefix the
command you want with an environment variable assignment. I don't think
the need you're discussing is widespread enough to warrant further
complicating shell syntax.
A much simpler option might be just convincing libc people to make
line-buffering the default whether isatty or not. Machines are very fast
these days, and any program that _knows_ it's emitting non-line-oriented
data can opt into full buffering.
