Clearing file object buffers

[disgracelands]

In my code i have setup sys.stdout and sys.stderr as file objects so that i
can easily track whats going on during the course of my program.  So far its
proving useful but the objects seem to be buffering any text supplied to
their write() functions and when i hit an error condition and have to exit
early they fail to write and i'm left with empty files.

Is there any way to force the file objects to flush the buffer to file on
disc?

thanks,
dis