Re: Why stdout_write checks for terminal?

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 05:56:40PM +0300, Sergey Dmitrouk wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> the code in src/stdio/__stdout_write.c checks whether output is going to
> a terminal and if it's not the case disables line buffering.  I'm
> wondering what's the reason behind this?  This causes some programs to
> produce different output depending whether stdout is terminal or not,
> not a bit deal, but I don't see much profit in disabling buffering
> either.

Full buffering _must_ be disabled if the underlying file is an
"interactive device" (terminal); this is a requirement of the
standards. Somewhere in the distant past musl always put stdout in
line-buffered mode, but users complained (rightfully) because programs
writing binary data to stdout (e.g. things like djpeg) were 10-100x
slower than with other libcs, so now whether it's line or full
buffered depends on whether it's a terminal.

Rich