I'm reading from a serial port connected to a gps device sending nmea strings.
A simplified invocation to illustrate my point:
$ awk '{ print $0 }' /dev/ttyPSC9
GPGGA,073651.000,6310.1043,N,01436.1539,E,1,07,1.0,340.2,M,33.3,M,,0000*56
$GPGSA,A,3,28,22,09,27,01,19,17,,,,,,2.3,1.0,2.0*39
$GPRMC,073651.000,A,6310.1043,N,01436.1539,E,0.42,163.42,070312,,,A*67
GPGGA,073652.000,6310.1043,N,01436.1540,E,1,07,1.0,339.2,M,33.3,M,,0000*55
$GPGSA,A,3,28,22,09,27,01,19,17,,,,,,2.3,1.0,2.0*39
If I instead try to read from a pipe, awk buffers the input before sending it to stdout.
$ cat /dev/ttyPSC9 | awk '{ print $0 }'
<long pause>
GPGGA,073651.000,6310.1043,N,01436.1539,E,1,07,1.0,340.2,M,33.3,M,,0000*56
$GPGSA,A,3,28,22,09,27,01,19,17,,,,,,2.3,1.0,2.0*39
$GPRMC,073651.000,A,6310.1043,N,01436.1539,E,0.42,163.42,070312,,,A*67
GPGGA,073652.000,6310.1043,N,01436.1540,E,1,07,1.0,339.2,M,33.3,M,,0000*55
$GPGSA,A,3,28,22,09,27,01,19,17,,,,,,2.3,1.0,2.0*39
How can I avoid the buffering?
Edit: Kyle Jones suggested that cat is buffering it's output but that doesn't appear to be happening:
$ strace cat /dev/ttyPSC9 | awk '{ print $0 }'
write(1, "2,"..., 2) = 2
read(3, "E"..., 4096) = 1
write(1, "E"..., 1) = 1
read(3, ",0"..., 4096) = 2
When I think about it: I thought that a program used line buffering when writing to a terminal and "regular buffering" for all other cases. Then, why is cat not buffering more? Is the serial port signaling EOF? Then why is cat not terminated?