I can't help you with the device problem. However, if you do a: man fflush
You will get a manual page of the fflush C function for the particular UNIX or UNIX-like system you are using, presumably and hopefully Debian Linux since you posted to this Debian mailing list. In general, all available C routines have man pages. Here is some of the output from the above man page: FFLUSH(3) Linux Programmer's Manual FFLUSH(3) NAME fflush - flush a stream SYNOPSIS #include <stdio.h> int fflush(FILE *stream); DESCRIPTION .... see the man page :-) Good luck. -Ossama ______________________________________________________________________ Ossama Othman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --- PGP Keys --- Public: http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/staff/othman/OO_PUBLIC.asc REVOKED: http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/staff/othman/OO_REVOKED.asc -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .