Re: [RFC] shred: --verbose output to stdout

[Jim Meyering]

Steven Schubiger <address@hidden> wrote:
> After skimming through a bit of code from shred, I was eager
> to see how easy it would be to change the corresponding calls
> of error() that are relevant to verbosity output to call some
> "equivalent" function, which outputs to stdout, i.e.
>
>  static void
>  output (const char const *fmt, ...)
>  {
>    va_list ap;
>    va_start (ap, fmt);
>    fprintf (stdout, "%s: ", program_name);
>    vfprintf (stdout, fmt, ap);
>    fprintf (stdout, "\n");
>    va_end (ap);
>  }
>
> This is a bit more terse than it ought to be, but it illustrates
> that it can be easily implemented for shred itself required that
> 3 non-fatal calls to error() are to be replaced with calls to output().
>
> It is also questionable whether the code should reside in some library and
> thus may also be used by mkdir and split or whether each program has its
> own piece of customized code.

shred uses stdout when FILE is "-", so its verbose output
must continue to go to stderr.

For mkdir.c and split.c, the above might work, assuming you add a call to
fflush (stdout).

Thanks for looking at this.