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From: davidr@hplsla.HP.COM (David M. Reed)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: MS-DOS puzzle #1
Message-ID: <5190010@hplsla.HP.COM>
Date: 24 Apr 89 18:39:51 GMT
References: <6893@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
Organization: HP Lake Stevens, WA
Lines: 16

I do not know why MicroSoft did not implement filehandle re-direction so
that the user could re-direct I/O other than stdin and stdout.  To me it
is another example of MS-DOS being brain-dead, and one of the reasons I
prefer to use the MKS Korn-shell.

Recently we had need (again) for this capability of directing stderr to a
file.  The program a user was running here would encounter an error, write
the message to stdout, and then the program would end with a clear screen
action!  Insufficient time to read the message.  (One really had to be 
watching the screen to even see that what looked like an error message
had been flashed to the screen.  And since this program was typically
auto-running for about 45 minutes of number crunching before it go to the
error, the user was not typically watching the screen.)  So I started up
the program for him under the MKS shell with stderr being sent to a file,
and, wonder of wonders, the next time the program aborted we had the error
message neatly captured in a file!