Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello all. I've been lurking here for a year or two and finally decided to post.

I need some assistance with file descriptors, stdout, and redirecting output. I've searched through a number of very helpful threads here (unfortunately I can't link to any of them yet due to my low post count...), and I've done a fair amount of experimenting, but I haven't been able to come up with a solution. (I really tried to do my own legwork before asking for help.)

I'm writing a ksh script that opens up two file descriptors, one for the "regular" log file (exec 3> myfile) and one specifically for an error log file (exec 4> my_error_file).

I want the output to be directed to specific files, and to make this mandatory and beyond user control. However, I would also like to have the script output to the terminal as it executes.

I can redirect to my file descriptors just fine; I can't figure out how to simultaneously redirect to the terminal, though. I have unsuccessfully tried to use tee and I've tried redirecting my output in various ways, but I'm missing something fundamental. I would be very appreciative if anybody could offer any advice!

Here are the relevant code snippets and some psuedocode of what I'm doing and what I've tried thus far:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/ksh
LOG_FILE=/home/mydir/regular_log_file.log
LOG_ERROR_FILE=/home/mydir/error_log_file.log
 
exec 3> $LOG_ERROR_FILE # send this to regular_log_file.log. Non-error information messages get written here
exec 4> $LOG_ERROR_FILE # send this to error_log_file.log. If it blows up, it gets written here
 
# usage() function
usage(){ 
print " There's lots of print commands here that show how to use this script. I want these to display to both the screen and the relevant log file. 
I get it to the log file just fine by using 'usage 1>&4', so I don't have to specify where the file goes when I call print"
}
 
# send_email() function
# send email if the script fails
send_email(){ 
cat $ERROR_LOG_FILE | mailx ... ... ...
}

... and later in the script ...

Code:

# attempt to touch tarfile to see whether we can write
# the TARFILE_LOCATION and TARFILE variables get set properly in code I didn't include; trust me
touch ${TARFILE_LOCATION}/${TARFILE} > /dev/null
if [[ $? != 0 ]]; then
print -u4 " "
print -u4 "ERROR: Unable to write tarfile to $TARFILE_LOCATION."
print -u4 " Script cannot recover from this error. Exiting..."
send_email
fi

So, as you can see, all of my error output gets processed through "print -u4" commands, removing the need for excessive amounts of > and >> redirects. The script looks tidy, I don't have to carefully troubleshoot 700 lines to make sure that I didn't accidentally > when I meant to >>, and life is good.

Debugging is a pain, though. I have to go dig up the log files each and every time in order to see how the script behaved. I would like to be able to continue to call "print -u4 text" but also be able to see that output in stdout, so when I (or other people) use the script, it appears to actually do something.

I know the script is doing something, but a lot of people will use this, see a blank line and "hung" cursor, and panic...

Any help would be much appreciated! Thank you!

Moderator's Comments:

Code tags for code, please.

Instead of redirecting to 3 and 4 and using 'print -u4', you could've redirected stdout and stderr themselves. with 'exec 1>' and 'exec 2>' respectively, and not modified your print commands at all.

Of course, since you seem to wish to preserve stdout/stderr now, it'd be better to keep stdout/err as is.

A redirection can't cause something to print twice. If you want to print twice, you have to print twice. You can make a function to do so, however, simplifying things for you.

Code:

function output
{
        print "$@" >&3
        [ ! -z "$DEBUG" ] && print "$@"
}

function debug
{
        print "$@" >&4
        [ ! -z "$DEBUG" ] && print "$@" >&2
}

If you want to see the output appear on the screen, run it like DEBUG=1 ./myscript

or export the DEBUG variable in your shell or profile.

Corona688,

Thank you for the advice.

Multiple users in different parts of my organization will end up using this script. I decided to write to 3 and 4 because I did not want other users controlling where the log files got written, such as by calling the script as:

Code:

 
myscript.ksh > /some/other/location/output.log 2>&1

I'm paranoid; I hope that is forgivable.

... I think I understand what you're saying, though.

Even if someone does try to co-opt my output using the redirect shown above, the script wrangles the output I defined for 2, overriding the other users' redirects.

I tried it and it seems to work that way. Thanks! I never thought about doing it this way.