'stdbuf --output=L' will line-buffer the command's output stream. Pretty useful, but that's looking for newlines. Filenames should be passed between utilities in a null-terminated fashion, because the null byte is the only byte that can't appear within one.
If I want to buffer output data on null bytes, the closest I can get is 'stdbuf --output=0', which doesn't buffer at all. This is pretty inefficient. 0 means unbuffered, and Z is already taken for, I guess, zebibytes. --output=N, then? Would this require a change to libc implementations, or is it possible now? - Zack
