Buffer flush doesn't work quite as expected

[David Cartwright]

Hi,

I've got a PHP script (running on MacOS X, PHP 4.1.12) which uploads
bookings from one database to another, and I'd like to have the screen show
progress as it happens (each time I process a booking, I write a line
summarising it to the browser with 'print')

From RTFMing and Googling, it seems that I should be able to do this by
turning output buffering on and using ob_flush() et al. However, this only
sort-of works, in that instead of getting output line by line, I get a
multi-line chunk on the browser from time to time.

Am I stuck with having this chunk-by-chunk visualisation, or can anyone
please suggest a way that I can make it force each line to the browser as I
write it?

Thanks in anticipation,

David C

[Sergej Andrejev]

Here is an example which works for me, but I personaly recommend not to
use buffering at all
<?
function sample($buffer) {
global $i;
if(!isset($i)) $i = 1;
$bufer = "$i<br />";
$i++;
return ($bufer);
}

// don't forget to start buffering
ob_start("sample");

ob_flush();
ob_flush();
ob_flush();
ob_flush();

// and don't forget to end it
ob_end_flush();
?>

[Jasen Betts]

In article <dc**********@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>, David Cartwright wrote:

From RTFMing and Googling, it seems that I should be able to do this by
turning output buffering on and using ob_flush() et al. However, this only
sort-of works, in that instead of getting output line by line, I get a
multi-line chunk on the browser from time to time.

the result you see may depend on your browser, web server etc...
I did something similar in perl and got character by character output in
mozilla but not in IE.

Bye.
Jasen