Autoflush the buffer. This is directly from perlvar:

$|
If set to nonzero, forces a flush right away and after every write or print on the currently selected output channel. Default is 0 (regardless of whether the channel is actually buffered by the system or not; $| tells you only whether you've asked Perl explicitly to flush after each write). Note that STDOUT will typically be line buffered if output is to the terminal and block buffered otherwise. Setting this variable is useful primarily when you are outputting to a pipe, such as when you are running a Perl script under rsh and want to see the output as it's happening. This has no effect on input buffering. (Mnemonic: when you want your pipes to be piping hot.)