Subject: bug#43364: Possible bug with output redirection

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2020 09:13:02 +0200

On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 10:59:23PM +0200, pinoaffe wrote:
> Dear guilers,
> 
> When using with-output-to-string, the output of external processes
> started using system* and the like is not redirected to the temporary
> port. As far as I can tell, it just redirects things written/displayed
> from within guile.
> This seems to be a bug, or if this is intended behaviour it might be
> beneficial to document this somewhere.

I think this is intentional (or rather: out of Guile's scope). While the
Guile process's output functions are the scope of `with-output-to-string',
the subprocess started with `system' just happens to inherit the standard
output file descriptor, which is an operating system mechanism.

No idea, for example, about what would happen under Windows or other
(more or less) operating systems.

But you are right that it can be a bit confusing. I'm not sure whether a
hint in the doc would be in place.

What do oters think?

Cheers
-- t