In all three cases, you are not seeing whatever material comes before the first \n of output.

In the middle case, you add a \n before the first string, working around it. In the third case, you have no \n's at all, so you lose it all.

Why your terminal is behaving that way is something that's beyond the information you presented. I suggest you explore the "first \n" idea in your context to get to the bottom of it, and use your first case above in a stand-alone program run in the normal way, to verify that it does work.

—John