rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverijnl richard

If, yes. If you're unlucky, though, stderr will appear in the console
window, not in the user's main window, and he'll completely overlook it.
The sysadmin, OTOH, will be pissed off at you for spamming his log files
with completely meaningless messages. stderr is for error messages, not
for prompts. Besides, if stdout _is_ redirected, that was intentional.

Richard

richard herring

In message <4265179c.15503077@news.xs4all.nl>, Richard Bos
<rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl> writes

What is a "console window"?


Just as he would if he redirected stdout to a file, or piped it to another program.


What is a "sysadmin"?

Even back in the days when I had to manage a mainframe system, I don't
recall messages to stderr from user programs ever going anywhere but the
user's teletype. But yes, it's true that the way the standard streams
are connected to the hardware is beyond the scope of the C or C++
standards, so anything could happen.

And stdout is for computed output, not for prompts. In the absence of a
stdprompt, one has to use one or the other, and the decision is not best
made on the basis of its name but on how it interacts with the outside world.


Of course. It's not something one does by accident. But intentions
differ.

--
Richard Herring