Re:"Rules" that terminal programs follow
by matheusmoreira on Friday December 13, 2024 @06:25PM
(#42413294)
I see what you mean. My logic only really applies to the simpler programs which exclusively use the standard file descriptors. It gets fuzzier when the output of a program is an actual file somewhere.
The output of a package manager is the packages. The text it writes to the terminal is not part of the output, it's just the program's log. I haven't thought about what's appropriate in this situation. By unix standards package managers shouldn't even be printing anything to begin with.
> Unless your app doesn't generate [stdout] output,then grepping the [visible] output will not work if it's stderr and it will be confusing
With the first "output" meaning "specifically stdout", and the second meaning "what you see on the terminal".
As in, you run a command, see it printed a lot of stuff, so then you do it again but piping it to `grep` or `less`, and realize none of that output was actually going to stdout.