On Tue, March 25, 2008 6:58 am, Paul G. Allen wrote: > Lan Barnes wrote: >> Why why WHY do programmers send informational messages to stderr? It >> makes >> it really difficult to script calls to the program that check for >> errors. >> What is it about the "err" in stderr that they don't understand? >> > > In addition to what SJS said, sometimes stdout will not work because > output may be redirected. An example might be a CGI script where stdout > would be redirected to the client browser. In such a case, it's usually > not desirable to send error messages to the client, so they are sent to > stderr, which is on the local machine. Many GUI apps may not be able to > display errors via stdout either, so stderr is used. > > stderr is generally the correct place to send error messages. > > PGA
I don't think I made myself clear. Yes, errors should go to stderr. What I'm complaining about is when "hey, everything's going great :-)" messages are sent to stderr, making error checking in my calling scripts a joke. -- Lan Barnes SCM Analyst Linux Guy Tcl/Tk Enthusiast Biodiesel Brewer -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
