Bashscripts.org

To avoid having to constantly redirect stderr, I usually exec it to a log file for the entire script at the start of the script. But, unintuitively, the "select" command writes its output to stderr instead of stdout, which prevents me from using that method.

Does anyone know why "select" writes to stderr instead of stdout?

Is there a way to have it use stdout instead?

To illustrate the problem, here's a small script. Uncomment the "exec" lines to see the behaviour.
---- begin test script
#!/bin/bash

#exec 2> x.log
date
lshlsfh

PS3="Option: "
OPT_L="\"option 1\" \
\"quit\""

eval set $OPT_L
select OPT in "$@"; do
case $OPT in
"option 1")
echo "you selected option 1"
break
;;
quit)
echo "you selected quit"
break
;;
esac
done

#exec 2>&-
exit
---- end test script

Kind regards,

Herta

Nope, I don't know why select(0) redirects to STDERR (as « python --version »). Though, you can avoid this by redirecting select(0)'s file descriptor 2 to file descriptor 1.

Also, you should never use eval(0), and set(0) in this case is useless : you're not writing for POSIX sh, so use arrays ! They're your friends.

Here is how I would write your code :

Nice!

Thanks, jsz.

Because, usually, the stdout of a script is what one is interested in