xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/stdbuf/stdbuf.1 (revision aa77200569e397d6ff1fdb4d255d0fa254d0a128)
1.\" Copyright (c) 2012 Jeremie Le Hen <jlh@FreeBSD.org>
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25.\" $FreeBSD$
26.\"
27.Dd April 28, 2012
28.Dt STDBUF 1
29.Os
30.Sh NAME
31.Nm stdbuf
32.Nd change standard streams initial buffering
33.Sh SYNOPSIS
34.Nm
35.Op Fl e Ar bufdef
36.Op Fl i Ar bufdef
37.Op Fl o Ar bufdef
38.Op Ar command Op ...
39.Sh DESCRIPTION
40.Nm
41is used to change the initial buffering of standard input,
42standard output and/or standard error streams for
43.Ar command .
44It relies on
45.Xr libstdbuf 3
46which is loaded and configured by
47.Nm
48through environment variables.
49.Pp
50The options are as follows:
51.Bl -tag -width Ds
52.It Fl e Ar bufdef
53Set initial buffering of the standard error stream for
54.Ar command
55as defined by
56.Ar bufdef
57.Pq see Sx BUFFER DEFINITION .
58.It Fl i Ar bufdef
59Set initial buffering of the standard input stream for
60.Ar command
61as defined by
62.Ar bufdef
63.Pq see Sx BUFFER DEFINITION .
64.It Fl o Ar bufdef
65Set initial buffering of the standard output stream for
66.Ar command
67as defined by
68.Ar bufdef
69.Pq see Sx BUFFER DEFINITION .
70.El
71.Sh BUFFER DEFINITION
72Buffer definition is the same as in
73.Xr libstdbuf 3 :
74.Bl -tag -width size -offset indent
75.It Qq 0
76unbuffered
77.It Qq L
78line buffered
79.It Qq B
80fully buffered with the default buffer size
81.It Ar size
82fully buffered with a buffer of
83.Ar size
84bytes (suffixes 'k', 'M' and 'G' are accepted)
85.El
86.Sh EXAMPLES
87In the following example, the stdout stream of the
88.Xr awk 1
89command
90will be fully buffered by default because it does not refer
91to a terminal.
92.Nm
93is used to force it to be line-buffered so
94.Xr vmstat 8 Ns 's
95output will not stall until the full buffer fills.
96.Bd -literal -offset indent
97# vmstat 1 | stdbuf -o L awk '$2 > 1 || $3 > 1' | cat -n
98.Ed
99.Sh SEE ALSO
100.Xr libstdbuf 3 ,
101.Xr setvbuf 3
102.Sh HISTORY
103The
104.Nm
105utility first appeared in
106.Fx 8.4 .
107.Sh AUTHORS
108.An -nosplit
109The original idea of the
110.Nm
111command comes from
112.An Padraig Brady
113who implemented it in the GNU coreutils.
114.An Jeremie Le Hen
115implemented it on
116.Fx .
117