Re: [FR] Display stderr contents after executing shell blocks (even when stdout :results output is requested) (was: Org 9.6-pre and Bash sessions)

[tomas]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2022 at 04:05:19AM +0000, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
> Rudolf Adamkovič <salutis@me.com> writes:
> 
> > Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:
> >
> >> I do not think that it make sense to display that buffer when the code
> >> finishes successfully. I can see this kind of behaviour
> >> breaking/spamming automated scripts or export---code working in the
> >> past may throw error output into unsuspecting users.
> >
> > But the exit code has nothing to do with the standard error.

[...]

> > For example, I use a program for work that uploads data to a certain
> > 3rd-party server.  It exits with a zero code but also shows extremely
> > important notices on error output.  As an "unsuspecting user", if I used
> > Babel to run the program, I would end up in a trouble.

[...]

> Dear All,
> 
> As explained in the above quote, it may be reasonable to display stderr
> in the shell (and possibly other) src blocks upon execution.
> 
> + Stderr may contain important information even if the code block
>   succeeds
> - Displaying stderr will raise *Error* buffer, which may or may not be
>   expected or desired.
> 
> What do you think?

My take as an Org user is that this makes a lot of sense. I don't know
whether there is an elegant way to accomodate all the use cases in
an elegant way, but to provide a concrete example where I'd have found
it handy...

While preparing a handout for an introduction to shell programming
(at a very basic level), I wanted to embed little examples with
their results. Org rocks at this kind of task.

But in this case it's important to show everything the students are
going to see. One could argue that the error part is even the most
important.

So what I needed was not only the stderr (optionally somehow separated
from stdout -- optionally as someone would see it in some terminal
session), but also all the above even when the exit code was nonzero.

Ideally, a display of that exit code, too.

I ended up massaging prologue and epilogue, which worked nicely,
but sadly is language dependent for a set of concepts which are,
one could argue, independent of the language [1].

So yes, I would be thrilled by such a possibility.

Cheers

[1] These are OS conventions. So also a language of sorts, but at
another level.

-- 
tomás

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