[ILUG] bash pipe buffering

[Padraig Brady]

Hi, is there a way to control the buffering on pipes in bash?
I've seen mention of pty in the unix faq, but I can't find it and
anyway it would involve data copying. Something like the
following would be useful:

ls -1 |- grep "something" # |- causes grep to get each line as ouputted 
from ls
or
cat file |. tr '\n' ' ' # |- causes tr to get each character ouputted 
from cat

thanks,
Padraig.