bash: force exec’d process to have unbuffered stdout

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GNU coreutils-8.5 also has the stdbuf command to modify I/O stream buffering:

http://www.pixelbeat.org/programming/stdio_buffering/

So, in your example case, simply invoke:

stdbuf -oL /usr/bin/some_binary > /tmp/my.log 2>&1

This will allow text to appear immediately line-by-line (once a line is completed with the end-of-line "\n" character in C). If you really want immediate output, use -o0 instead.

This way could be more desirable if you do not want to introduce dependency to expect via unbuffer command. The unbuffer way, on the other hand, is needed if you have to fool some_binary into thinking that it is facing a real tty standard output.

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