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Qshell's Black Hole
Hey, Ted:
A Qshell script displays unneeded and unwanted error messages. Can I eliminate them?
Here is an example of what I'm talking about. In the following script fragment, I want to set the value of variable BackupWasMade to either Y or N.
if cp ediinput ./backup
then BackupWasMade='Y'
else BackupWasMade='N'
fi
If the copy succeeds, BackupWasMade is set to Y, and everything's great. If the copy fails, BackupWasMade is set to N, but I see a message ("cp: 001-2113 Error found getting information for object ediinput. No such path or directory.") on the display. Can I suppress the message?
--Tim
As of V5R1, the Integrated File System has a special way to eliminate unwanted output. It's a file called /dev/null. Anything you write to this file disappears for eternity.
The cp utility routes the error message to the standard error device (stderr), which is designated by file handle 2. The solution to your problem is to redirect stderr to /dev/null. If the copy fails, you won't get the annoying message.
if cp ediinput ./backup 2>/dev/null
then BackupWasMade='Y'
else BackupWasMade='N'
fi
Use of /dev/null is not limited to Qshell. Since it's an IFS file, it's available to any programming language. Another interesting thing is that you can use /dev/null as an input file. It's always read as an empty file.
--Ted
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