Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!pacbell!att!ihuxy!vg55611
From: vg55611@ihuxy.ATT.COM (Gopal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: MS-DOS puzzle #1
Message-ID: <2937@ihuxy.ATT.COM>
Date: 23 Apr 89 01:49:51 GMT
References: <6893@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> <2936@ihuxy.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: vg55611@ihuxy.UUCP (55421-Gopal,V.P.)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 21

In article <2936@ihuxy.ATT.COM> I (rather hastily) wrote:

>>     Question:  Why does COMMAND.COM allow redirection of standard
>>     input and standard output, but not standard error?

>I think the question really should be - why does MS-DOS allow stdin/stdout
>redirection but not stderr ?  Command.com simply goes through DOS to do
>the redirection (by playing with the filehandles etc.)

I have to eat my own words, for Norton's book says that stderr is defined
in DOS (filehandle of 2) and he's usually right.  Perhaps redirection
of stderr was simply not implemented in command.com.  I wonder, though,
if applications really write to DOS stderr and not to BIOS.  I would still
guess that if stdin, stdout, stdprn etc. can be re-directed, stderr should
also be possible.

Venu P. Gopal
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