From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Adding streams for standard out and standard err Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2016 17:21:43 +0300 Message-ID: <83eg6nysug.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87oa5sexis.fsf@russet.org.uk> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1469110943 6735 80.91.229.3 (21 Jul 2016 14:22:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2016 14:22:23 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: phillip.lord@russet.org.uk (Phillip Lord) Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Jul 21 16:22:19 2016 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1bQErh-0003mB-Op for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 21 Jul 2016 16:22:18 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:41112 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bQErg-0004x5-R0 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 21 Jul 2016 10:22:16 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:35659) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bQEr7-0004ww-Ta for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 21 Jul 2016 10:21:42 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bQEr4-000146-M7 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 21 Jul 2016 10:21:41 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:49265) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bQEr4-000141-J6; Thu, 21 Jul 2016 10:21:38 -0400 Original-Received: from 84.94.185.246.cable.012.net.il ([84.94.185.246]:4912 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:128) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1bQEr2-0006Sr-Nd; Thu, 21 Jul 2016 10:21:37 -0400 In-reply-to: <87oa5sexis.fsf@russet.org.uk> (phillip.lord@russet.org.uk) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:205954 Archived-At: > From: phillip.lord@russet.org.uk (Phillip Lord) > Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2016 23:48:43 +0100 > > For a while I've wanted Emacs to have the ability to write to standard > out, and/or standard err, when not running in batch. Mostly, I've wanted > for debugging, as it involves touching no buffers at all. Can we take a step back and talk about the need and the use cases? Here're some thoughts related to this: . We already have (append-to-file START END FILENAME), which can be used to write a buffer or a string to a file. FILENAME can be "/dev/stderr" on Posix platforms, for example, or it can be a real file name. . On TTY frames, writing to standard streams can end up on the screen, in which case it will mess up the display. . On GUI frames, writing to standard streams can end up in some unpredictable place on the system, or even in the bitbucket, depending on what window system, desktop, and window manager are installed. On some systems, standard streams have invalid file descriptors in GUI sessions. So this proposed functionality sounds (a) not really necessary, and (b) somewhat unreliable/dangerous. If you have specific use cases where the existing functionality doesn't fit the bill, and the issues mentioned above are non-issues, please describe those use cases. Thanks.