Question

Consider the two scenarios a)shutdown output redirection and b)Rscript output redirection to file out.txt The output as seen in STDOUT in both scenarios, fails to get redirected to file out.txt only in scenario b. Am I missing something here or is this peculiar to Rscript.exe?

C:\>C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\shutdown.exe -t:30 > out.txt

C:\>dir out.txt
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 3568-1B07

 Directory of C:\

07/18/2012  07:43 PM               841 out.txt
               1 File(s)            841 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  17,618,206,720 bytes free

C:\>G:\\Progra~1\\R\\R-2.14.0\\bin\\Rscript.exe --version > out.txt
R scripting front-end version 2.14.0 (2011-10-31)

C:\>dir out.txt
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 3568-1B07

 Directory of C:\

07/18/2012  07:44 PM                 0 out.txt
               1 File(s)              0 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  17,618,239,488 bytes free

Any ideas or explanation on why Rscript.exe output is not getting redirected to file out.txt?? Maybe a very simple explanation awaits.

Thanking you,

Answer 1

The answer is pretty simple. The version information is written to STDERR (standard error stream), yet you’re only redirecting STDOUT (standard out). If you want both to go the file, then use

G:\\Progra~1\\R\\R-2.14.0\\bin\\Rscript.exe --version >out.txt 2>&1