The reason the way it is: About flushing... Please read and comment.

This is obvious to me but it seems I have to explain... There are reasons why things are made in a certain way. shells, by its nature, it's interactive for the most purposes, thus flushing every output make sense even if it cost CPU time. programming languages, by its nature, most part of programs do not have to be interactive even when programmer is writing interactive programs. Thus, flushing every output and lost CPU time does _not_ make sense. (I don't have to mention char device nature, right?) What we should do? We make CLI a shell or programming language? Personally, I don't need PHP/CLI shell... Please speak up if you need PHP/CLI to be shell! -- Yasuo Ohgaki