unbuffer disables the output buffering that occurs when program output is redirected. For example, suppose you are watching the output from a fifo by running it through od and then more.    od -c /tmp/fifo | more You will not see anything until a full page of output has been produced. You can disable this automatic buffering as follows:    unbuffer od -c /tmp/fifo | more

If there are some pipe between these commands, you need to flush stdout. for example: script -q /dev/null commands... | ruby -ne 'print "....\n";STDOUT.flush'