Re: Redirecting standard output

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> Hm...  oh!  process.c isn't compiled at all on MS-DOS?
>
> It is, but only its last part, the one outside the "#ifdef subprocesses"
> condition.  Which doesn't include start-process and its subroutines,
> of course.

Right.

> And I'm not sure this is the only reason why we have 2 APIs instead of
> one.

Does anybody know what the (historical) reason for these two functions
was?  The differing function parameters has always puzzled me:

(start-process NAME BUFFER PROGRAM &rest PROGRAM-ARGS)

(call-process PROGRAM &optional INFILE BUFFER DISPLAY &rest ARGS)

> And anyway, I'm not sure your conclusion about these 2 APIs being very
> similar is indeed true.  Nor do I see how start-process solves your
> problem: it doesn't let you separate stdout and stderr at all, unless
> you go through a shell.  What am I missing?

No, `start-process' doesn't help me at all.  I was just thinking that if
I made the change in `call-process', I should probably look at extending
the same parameters in `start-process', and then I started wondering
about why the two functions existed separately, which is when I wrote
that email.  :-)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  bloggy blog http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/