Dave2 Wickham's Journal: BZip 2 Problems (and the Inland Revenue can't spell)

Well, as you can probably tell by the title, I'm having BZip2 problems :P. Specifically it won't allow me to do a "bunzip2 --version 2> /dev/null" to see if it works. It outputs the --version text to stderr. The version I have is 1.0.1; if it's been fixed more recently, please tell me :). If not, does anyone know how I'd get around this problem?

And, onto my second point, the Inland Revenue can't spell. I got a "National Insurance Numbercard" today (presumably because I'm almost old enough to get a full time job). Last time I checked, "Numbercard" wasn't a word. *ahem*

UPDATE - 10:14 UK time - uncompress seems to behave like bunzip2 :(

Won't make you feel better:

[adamy]

Just tried this on the solaris box at work:

bunzip2 --version
bzip2, a block-sorting file compressor. Version 1.0.1, 23-June-2000.

Copyright (C) 1996-2000 by Julian Seward.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms set out in the LICENSE file, which is included
in the bzip2-1.0 source distribution.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
LICENSE file for more details.

bunzip2: I won't read compressed data from a terminal.
bunzip2: For help, type: `bunzip2 --help'.

So here it doesn't even report the version and return. I'll try it on linux at home. Should be an easy fix...

Re:Won't make you feel better:

[Dave2 Wickham]

Yep, that's the exact same message I get :(. And bunzip2 --help does the same... It's the only util which isn't playing nice with my new setup.

BTW

[adamy]

Directing to /dev/null produces no output

bash-2.05$ bunzip2 --version 2> /dev/null
bash-2.05$

Re:BTW

[Dave2 Wickham]

Yeah, it appears to use stderr for version/help messages...o_O

UPDATE

[Dave2 Wickham]

It appears uncompress has this behaviour as well :(

I dont quite understand your problem...

[agnosonga]

you dont want the version to be output to the screen, right?

isnt that what
"bunzip2 --version 2> /dev/null"
does?

Re:I dont quite understand your problem...

[Dave2 Wickham]

The 2> makes STDERR redirect to /dev/null. I want there to be output on --version, since it'll all go to Perl and won't be displayed - with no output, it'll count it as there being an error. With STDERR redirected to /dev/null there SHOULD only be "real output"...

Umm... this is hard to explain :). If you know perl, look at what I'm doing in the latest CVS version.