System.err or System.out

[Michelle Lee]

I have one question:
What is the difference between
System.err.print() or System.out.print().
Both use to print to standard output.
they seems behaviours same.
Can anybody explain to their difference? Thank you!
[ January 22, 2003: Message edited by: michelle Lee ]

[Nayanjyoti Talukdar]

In some applications, output is redirected to a file. In that scenario, System.err.println() is used to display the error messages in the console. If we use System.out.println(), then all the messages will be redirected to the specified file. This is done in order to prevent the error messages being displayed in the redirected file.
------------
Nayan.

[Arun Boraiah]

hi,
Thanks Talukdar ,
I have writen a sample code to test your suggestion hope it will be useful to understand
Type this in the command prompt while executing code.
java ErrStreamCheck >> test.txt
Error free output will go into file 'test.txt' and error records get printed into consol.
public class ErrStreamCheck
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
String strArr[] = { "p1","p2","p3" };
for(int i =0 ; i<5 ; i++ )
{
try
{
System.out.println("array content " + strArr[i] );
}
catch( Exception oEx )
{
System.err.println("Exception due to wrong index.");
}
}
}
}
[ January 22, 2003: Message edited by: Arun Boraiah ]
[ January 22, 2003: Message edited by: Arun Boraiah ]

[Ken Cobbs]

Thanks Arun,
That example was great! Putting that in my memory bucket( on disk )

[Nayanjyoti Talukdar]

Nice example, Arun
I forgot to mention example!!

[Layne Lund]

System.err does not print to standard out (as stdout); it prints to standard error (stderr). Normally, these are both the console, but as shown in the above example it doesn't have to be. I think these ideas stem from Unix. At least that's where I have become the most familiar with them.
HTH
Layne

[Nayanjyoti Talukdar]

Normally, these are both the console, but as shown in the above example it doesn't have to be.

what do u mean by that? Do u meanit shouldn't behave like that?
--------------
Nayan

[Michelle Lee]

Thank you all! javaranch is really great, you
can learn a lot from here.