Telnet and Netcat on Unix do not send the user's input unless it's terminated with a newline character.
Vandyke SecureCRT (Telnet) does the same. Telnet in Windows sends character-by-character. BTW SSH in SecureCRT works fine symbol-by-symbol. It looks to me it depends on terminal emulation mode. Any ideas? Thanks
Comment on Re: A non-blocking server using 'select' calls
As you and tachyon eventually discovered, this is a client thing. Different clients use different ways to determine when to send single characters or wait for an entire line. If you need a client that does exactly what you want, then you will probably have to write your own.