Did stdio buffering change over time? If you look at an old BSD mkfs for cylinder-group style file systems (not 7th Ed filesystems) you will see the super block backup loop does not fflush(stdio) between printf()s printf("super-block backups (for fsck -b#) at:"); for (cylno = 0; cylno < sblock.fs_ncg; cylno++) { initcg(cylno); if (cylno % 10 == 0) printf("\n"); printf(" %d,", fsbtodb(&sblock, cgsblock(&sblock, cylno))); } but I have memories that the superblocks were printed out one at a time as if fflush(stdout) was called between them rather than one line at a time with line-buffered stdio. At some point I thought "SysV must have broke this" since newfs would print out a complete row of superblock numbers at once with a big delay between the rows rather than each superblock number with a short delay between each number. But when I go searching the oldest BSD code has no fflush(stdout) the way modern FreeBSD does: for (cylno = 0; cylno < sblock.fs_ncg; cylno++) { initcg(cylno, utime); if (mfs) continue; j = snprintf(tmpbuf, sizeof(tmpbuf), " %ld%s", fsbtodb(&sblock, cgsblock(&sblock, cylno)), cylno < (sblock.fs_ncg-1) ? "," : "" ); if (i + j >= width) { printf("\n"); i = 0; } i += j; printf("%s", tmpbuf); fflush(stdout); } Did stdio buffering change over time so that line buffering became the default? Thanks, Ken __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree