Hi, The glibc 'iconv' program buffers its input, and some people don't like this. I thought that the 'stdbuf' program could remove the buffering, but it does not work.
How to reproduce: Create this script and make it executable: ================================== producer ================================== #!/bin/sh echo Hello /bin/sleep 3 echo World ============================================================================== $ ./producer | /usr/bin/iconv -f ASCII Hello World All the output comes at the end. $ stdbuf -o 0 ./producer | /usr/bin/iconv -f ASCII Hello World All the output comes at the end. $ ./producer | stdbuf -i 0 /usr/bin/iconv -f ASCII Hello World All the output comes at the end. $ stdbuf -o 0 ./producer | stdbuf -i 0 /usr/bin/iconv -f ASCII Hello World All the output comes at the end. What do I need to do to get the output of the first line immediately? /usr/bin/iconv is from glibc, but I get the same behaviour from libiconv's 'iconv' program too. In $ ./producer | /bin/cat I get the first line immediately, but the coreutils documentation <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/stdbuf-invocation.html> makes me think that 'stdbuf' is meant for those programs that do not work like 'cat'. Bruno -- In memoriam José Olaya <http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Olaya>
