xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/stdbuf/stdbuf.1 (revision 2e3f49888ec8851bafb22011533217487764fdb0)
1.\" Copyright (c) 2012 Jeremie Le Hen <jlh@FreeBSD.org>
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25.Dd April 28, 2012
26.Dt STDBUF 1
27.Os
28.Sh NAME
29.Nm stdbuf
30.Nd change standard streams initial buffering
31.Sh SYNOPSIS
32.Nm
33.Op Fl e Ar bufdef
34.Op Fl i Ar bufdef
35.Op Fl o Ar bufdef
36.Op Ar command Op ...
37.Sh DESCRIPTION
38.Nm
39is used to change the initial buffering of standard input,
40standard output and/or standard error streams for
41.Ar command .
42It relies on
43.Xr libstdbuf 3
44which is loaded and configured by
45.Nm
46through environment variables.
47.Pp
48The options are as follows:
49.Bl -tag -width Ds
50.It Fl e Ar bufdef
51Set initial buffering of the standard error stream for
52.Ar command
53as defined by
54.Ar bufdef
55.Pq see Sx BUFFER DEFINITION .
56.It Fl i Ar bufdef
57Set initial buffering of the standard input stream for
58.Ar command
59as defined by
60.Ar bufdef
61.Pq see Sx BUFFER DEFINITION .
62.It Fl o Ar bufdef
63Set initial buffering of the standard output stream for
64.Ar command
65as defined by
66.Ar bufdef
67.Pq see Sx BUFFER DEFINITION .
68.El
69.Sh BUFFER DEFINITION
70Buffer definition is the same as in
71.Xr libstdbuf 3 :
72.Bl -tag -width size -offset indent
73.It Qq 0
74unbuffered
75.It Qq L
76line buffered
77.It Qq B
78fully buffered with the default buffer size
79.It Ar size
80fully buffered with a buffer of
81.Ar size
82bytes (suffixes 'k', 'M' and 'G' are accepted)
83.El
84.Sh EXAMPLES
85In the following example, the stdout stream of the
86.Xr awk 1
87command
88will be fully buffered by default because it does not refer
89to a terminal.
90.Nm
91is used to force it to be line-buffered so
92.Xr vmstat 8 Ns 's
93output will not stall until the full buffer fills.
94.Bd -literal -offset indent
95# vmstat 1 | stdbuf -o L awk '$2 > 1 || $3 > 1' | cat -n
96.Ed
97.Sh SEE ALSO
98.Xr libstdbuf 3 ,
99.Xr setvbuf 3
100.Sh HISTORY
101The
102.Nm
103utility first appeared in
104.Fx 8.4 .
105.Sh AUTHORS
106.An -nosplit
107The original idea of the
108.Nm
109command comes from
110.An Padraig Brady
111who implemented it in the GNU coreutils.
112.An Jeremie Le Hen
113implemented it on
114.Fx .
115