I've not written scripts along these lines before, but have you looked into Expect and also the $| variable? I think $| sets the flushing behavior on Perl's output only, but I could be wrong. The Expect module is designed to automate use of this sort of prompt-the-user tool.

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[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

In reply to Re: open* and buffered program output by halley
in thread open* and buffered program output by narse

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