Split Flushing to filter command

[Eldon]

Hello all,
I am attempting the following in a bash shell on a 3.8.13 linux kernel:
sudo tcpdump -nn 
    |grep --line-buffered NTPv2 
    |split -u --lines=10 --filter=date

Clearly date would be replaced with some more useful script, but for the
mean time I am trying to use it to debug what I see as unexpected
buffering. Since the traffic I am looking at is fairly consistent (when
I pipe to cat instead, I see a steady stream), I would expect to see
regular ticks as date executions each time 10 lines are sent to
split. Instead I see flashes of many executions that seem to me to be a
buffer flush. I looked in the code in the git repo, and it seems that
the buffer is in fact filled prior to execution. Is it worth making a
patch or expanding the meaning of -u to pass this through in an
unbuffered fashion? Would there be a reason to reject such a patch if
well-formed?

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Eldon

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