Simple but baffling counter problem

[DJM]

Consider the following code:

<?php

while ($i<50) {

 echo $i;
 $i++;

}

I would expect each succeeding value of $i to be echoed to the screen until the loop completed, but what happens is that the loop completes and THEN all the values are printed to the screen simultaneously! Even if I slow the process down with a "sleep(1)" the screen remains blank until the loop finishes and then everything is plonked onto the screen. The same thing happens with a FOR loop as well.

Any ideas?

[laserlight]

Sending output to the client is expensive, I think, so what happens is that output is stored in a buffer and flushed all at once.

[DJM]

Yes, thanks WebNessa - I think that's just what does happen. I think that it's also the case that the browser won't display anything at all until it's received a certain number of bytes.