Is it standard for stderr to be unbuffered?

[Michael Meissner]

In article <1534 at uakari.primate.wisc.edu> bin at primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral) writes:

| Do there exist systems on which stderr is NOT unbuffered, e.g.,
| line buffered?

While it's not a UNIX system, Data General's C compiler for AOS/VS and
AOS/VS-II automatically line buffers standard error (the overhead for
writing single characters was high enough, particularly through
networks, that users complained).

Even though I wrote most of the compiler, and some of the library
routines, I can't remember whether the native UNIX on the MV platform
(DG/UX) line buffers or unbuffers standard error.  I suspect it line
buffers it, since most of the standard I/O code was the same as for
AOS/VS.

The 88k (AViiON) of DG/UX uses the standard I/O code from AT&T System
V.3, so it gets whatever that system uses (unbuffers I believe).

In addition, I would suspect that C on other non-UNIX systems such as
VMS and MVS would line buffer standard error.

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Michael Meissner	email: meissner at osf.org		phone: 617-621-8861
Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA

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