From: Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@...>
Date: 2009-12-21T19:09:40+09:00
Subject: Re: redirecting stderr in irb


On Dec 21, 2009, at 00:26 , Martin DeMello wrote:

> Redirecting $stderr in irb doesn't work but redirecting
> $DEFAULT_OUTPUT does.

"doesn't work" is hardly true. You're certainly redirecting $stderr at the time. What you're confusing is that $DEFAULT_OUTPUT is not an alias for $stderr, but for $stdout. This is easily testable just by playing with the shell:

> % irb --noreadline 2> x
> >> blah
> NameError: undefined local variable or method `blah' for main:Object
> 	from (irb):1
> >> ^d
> % cat x
> %

Unfortunately, irb decided to print via STDOUT (which I prefer to keep hands off and play with $stdout only), so messing with it (for me) is a no-no.

>   class StdioOutputMethod<OutputMethod
>     def print(*opts)
>       STDOUT.print(*opts)
>     end
>   end

I think what you really want to do is to temporarily reassign output_method in the context.