Can I print output to stderr in batch mode WITHOUT a trailing newline?

Question

In emacs --batch (also, emacs --script),

(message "My Message")

will print "My Message" to standard error (file descriptor 2) along with a trailing newline.

What if I don't want the newline? I see that theoretically,

(princ "My Message" standard-error)`

would work, if standard-error were defined.

Confusingly, standard-output and standard-input are defined, however.

Is this even possible?

I found that `(defvar standard-error 'external-debugging-output)` makes the above behave nicely, thanks to @wasamasa — Joel M Ward, Jan 18 '17 at 19:10

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 11 '16 at 21:54

5

According to the manual, anything printing a message in batch mode will use stderr for this. The print/prin1/princ family will continue printing to stdout unless you pass the optional argument for picking a different char printing function, therefore the following will work:

(princ "My Message" 'external-debugging-output)

Apparently the Emacs developers consider stderr only for reporting errors and debug output ;)

answered Jun 11 '16 at 21:54

wasamasa

21,803
1
65
97

How did you find that out? – Joel M Ward Jun 12 '16 at 15:47
1

I jumped to the sources of `princ` with `find-function`, then searched the sources for usage of `stderr`. Eventually I found that special char printing function... – wasamasa Jun 12 '16 at 18:38

Can I print output to stderr in batch mode WITHOUT a trailing newline?

1 Answers1