Re: [PATCH] Introduce git version --list-features for porcelain use

"Shawn O. Pearce" [off-list ref] writes:

Why cat?  Tcl is so horribly broken that to get data for both stdout
and stderr through a pipe I have to do something sick like:

	git fetch 2>&1 | cat

because in Tcl its actually:

	set rdr [open "| git fetch |& cat" r]

The |& means 2>&1| in normal shell.  But that means I have to have
a process after it to receive the data.  Normally that's cat.
But MinGW doesn't have cat.  (Nor do they have dog, but neither
does Linux...).  So I need a way to redirect output.

Wait a minute.  Who interprets |& in the above?  Isn't it a
shell?

That's why I asked if you are writing for shell-less
environment.  If you are _not_, can't you do something like this
instead?

	set rdr [open "| sh -c 'git fetch 2>&1'" r]

that is, instead of running a command called "git", you invoke a
command called "sh" with two parameters, the second parameter
being a tad long string that happens to have three letter
sequence '2>&1' in it.