[VPM] I'm just full of questions today

[nkuipers]

Hello again,

I've re-reading the Llama, just to come back to basics a bit and consolidate, 
and I came across the following in Chapter 11, page 150 (the first footnote):

"Also, generally, errors aren't buffered.  That means that if the standard 
error and standard output streams are both going to the same place (such as 
the monitor), the errors may appear earlier than the normal output.  For 
example, if your program prints a line of ordinary text, then tries to divide 
by zero, the output may show the message about dividing by zero first, and the 
ordinary text second."

Let's break that down.

-generally, errors aren't buffered

When are they buffered, how do you recognize when this is the case, and how do 
you apply error buffering (and why/when would you want to)?

-the output may show the message about dividing by zero first, and the 
ordinary text second

May?  As in, this is a platform-dependent phenomenon?  This is a magical 
phenomenon?  This is perl taking a guess and generally being wrong phenomenon?
 Also, this behavior seems awfully reminiscent of a stack.  Is there a stack 
under the hood here?

too much to know...

nathanael