STDERR and STDOUT appear in the wrong order when piping to a file

a Perl script - test.pl:

print "OUT 1\n";
print STDERR "ERR 2\n";
print "OUT 3\n";
print STDERR "ERR 4\n";
print "OUT 5\n";

Run the script, piping all output into a file:

perl test.pl &> file.log

cat file.log

ERR 2

ERR 4

OUT 1

OUT 3

OUT 5

Output is in the wrong order :(

Run it again using unbuffer:

unbuffer perl test.pl &> file.log

cat file.log

OUT 1

ERR 2

OUT 3

ERR 4

OUT 5

Output is in the correct order :)

(source)

Another way:

script -c 'perl ~/temp/stream.pl' file.log

cat file.log

(source)