Linux manual pages Section 1: General Commands  

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] 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/>

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.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2013 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.