roy@phri.UUCP (01/23/86)
Index: ucb/biff.c, usr.bin/mesg.c 4.2BSD Description: Biff produces its output to stdout, mesg uses stderr. It's not clear which is "correct", but they should be the same. In a shell script I wanted to turn off messages and then restore to the original state by doing b=`biff | sed s/is//`; COMMANDS; biff $b, and similarly for mesg. To loose the "is y" and "is n" messages, I redirected biff/mesg into /dev/null, and thus discovered the disparity. Repeat-By: Try the following: biff; biff > /dev/null; biff >& /dev/null mesg; mesg > /dev/null; mesg >& /dev/null Fix: It's so obvious it hardly requires mentioning. Either change the "printf"'s in biff or the "fprintf (stderr"'s in mesg to match the other program. -- Roy Smith <allegra!phri!roy> System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016