That's very interesting.
I guess my initial experience on Turbo C gave me this opposite feeling.

#include <stdio.h>
/* #include <unistd.h> */
main(){
        while(1){
                sleep(1);
                printf("123");
        }
        return 0;
}
[download]

The above code, when running on Windows Turbo C, it prints 123 every second without the necessity of a NL character. But when compiled on g++ on Unix, it never prints anything because of no NL for the stream to be flushed.

But ActicePerl on Windows has the same behavior as on Unix, i.e. it prints nothing without seeing an NL character.

Is this because Perl tries hard to make itself platform independent, or it's because that Turbo C is archaic and has such different behavior than every one else?