Re: hash -l with empty hash table prints to stdout

[Chet Ramey]

On 6/16/20 9:46 AM, Eli Schwartz wrote:
> On 6/16/20 9:30 AM, Chet Ramey wrote:
>> On 6/15/20 4:47 PM, beluro@web.de wrote:
>>
>>> Bash Version: 5.0
>>> Patch Level: 3
>>> Release Status: release
>>>
>>> Description:
>>
>>>     `hash -l' is supposed to generate output that is reusable as input
>>>     (`help hash' says so, at least). In case the hash table is empty, a
>>>     string not re-usable as input is output to stdout. The exit code
>>>     indicates success in this case. The string being output is locale-
>>>     dependant (and therefore is hard to filter out in a work-around).
>>
>> It's an interesting question. An empty hash table is not an error
>> condition, and doesn't result in a non-zero exit status, so output to
>> stderr is not appropriate. You might want to temporarily enable posix mode,
>> which suppresses the message.
> 
> stderr is also a reasonably appropriate place to emit debug info or
> warnings. I would consider this a warning condition...

It's not a warning; there's nothing to warn about. An empty hash table is
not an exceptional condition. It's simply informational.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/