I've seen other programs printing only informative messages to stderr.
Depends on what you call a "informative message", a warning should go to stderr. Normal output should go to stdout. `total NNNN' is normal output, hence it should go to stdout. I know this behavior is standardized but IIRC I've already read about (old) implementations that printed the `total' to stderr. And those implementations where broken. _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils