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From: Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha•warpmail.net>
To: Giuseppe Scrivano <gscrivano@gnu•org>
Cc: git@vger•kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH] Print the usage string on stdout instead of stderr.
Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 13:46:30 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <4BF12C96.9030802@drmicha.warpmail.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <878w7ieu4p.fsf@thor.thematica.it>

Giuseppe Scrivano venit, vidit, dixit 17.05.2010 11:48:
> Hello,
> 
> I have noticed that the -h flag uses stderr to print the usage string,
> is there any reason for it?

As a general rule, regular output goes to stdout and error reports to
stderr.

Now, usage messages are displayed on specific request (-h) as well as
when a command is used with wrong arguments. So the classification
depends on the use case! But I reckon that even with '-h', usage strings
are not exactly "regular output", so stderr looks more natural to me.

More importantly, callers expect error messages on stderr, such as usage
with wrong arguments. I don't think scripts would call commands with
'-h', and if they do they do so on purpose and can parse stderr, knowing
there is no stdout in this case.

Michael

P.S.: I guess this means NACK from me FWIIW.

> 
> The small patch I have attached changes -h to print on stdout.
> 
> Thanks,
> Giuseppe
> 

  reply	other threads:[~2010-05-17 11:46 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2010-05-17  9:48 [RFC][PATCH] Print the usage string on stdout instead of stderr Giuseppe Scrivano
2010-05-17 11:46 ` Michael J Gruber [this message]
2010-05-17 12:07   ` Miles Bader
2010-05-17 13:30     ` Michael J Gruber
2010-05-17 13:54       ` Miles Bader
2010-05-17 14:07       ` Giuseppe Scrivano
2010-05-17 14:11         ` Tay Ray Chuan
2010-05-17 12:40   ` Giuseppe Scrivano
2010-05-17 13:30     ` Michael J Gruber
2010-05-17 16:02       ` Giuseppe Scrivano
2010-05-18  9:43         ` Michael J Gruber
2010-05-24 20:51           ` Giuseppe Scrivano
2010-05-25  6:46             ` Michael J Gruber
2010-05-25  8:40               ` [PATCH v2] " Giuseppe Scrivano

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