sorry Dave...my original post said I tried using "$|++", hence the deprecated version of autoflush, so I did some more research and found that using the IO module works.

I didn't know that the use of $| is technically deprecated. At least, perldoc perlvar doesn't mention it. Indeed it is peculiar in that it depends on the currently selected handle, and some care is needed in using it, so that IO::Handle provides a more convenient interface in many circumstances.