linux man page for stdbuf

STDBUF(1)							   User Commands							 STDBUF(1)

NAME
       stdbuf - Run COMMAND, with modified buffering operations for its standard streams.

SYNOPSIS
       stdbuf OPTION... COMMAND

DESCRIPTION
       Run COMMAND, with modified buffering operations for its standard streams.

       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

       -i, --input=MODE
	      adjust standard input stream buffering

       -o, --output=MODE
	      adjust standard output stream buffering

       -e, --error=MODE
	      adjust standard error stream buffering

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
	      output version information and exit

       If MODE is `L' the corresponding stream will be line buffered.  This option is invalid with standard input.

       If MODE is `0' the corresponding stream will be unbuffered.

       Otherwise  MODE	is a number which may be followed by one of the following: KB 1000, K 1024, MB 1000*1000, M 1024*1024, and so on for G, T,
       P, E, Z, Y.  In this case the corresponding stream will be fully buffered with the buffer size set to MODE bytes.

       NOTE: If COMMAND adjusts the buffering of its standard streams (`tee' does for e.g.) then that will override corresponding settings changed
       by `stdbuf'.  Also some filters (like `dd' and `cat' etc.) don't use streams for I/O, and are thus unaffected by `stdbuf' settings.

EXAMPLES
       tail -f access.log | stdbuf -oL cut -d ' ' -f1 | uniq
       This will immedidately display unique entries from access.log

BUGS
       On GLIBC platforms, specifying a buffer size, i.e. using fully buffered mode will result in undefined operation.

AUTHOR
       Written by Padraig Brady.

REPORTING BUGS
       Report stdbuf bugs to bug-coreutils@gnu.org
       GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
       Report stdbuf translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.  There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO
       The  full documentation for stdbuf is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the info and stdbuf programs are properly installed at your site,
       the command

	      info coreutils 'stdbuf invocation'

       should give you access to the complete manual.

GNU coreutils 8.5						   February 2011							 STDBUF(1)