On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 9:40 AM, Lan Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
You don't want "everything's going great" messages to get mixed in
with the standard output, do you? Strange stuff in the output, which
in principle might be piped to another program, is worse than strange
stuff in the error messages.
carl
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carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego
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