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Sep 16, 2019 at 23:58 comment added dave_thompson_085 Fortran didn't distinguish error and 'normal' as such, but at least on IBM, by mid-60s FIV/F66, it did distinguish unit 6 'line printer' intended to be read by humans and unit 7 'card punch' intended to be processed by another program, or another run of the same program (with updated data, better parameters, more resources, etc). 'printer' output might be more likely to contain error info but also very often contained normal non-error output. Programmers in those days were almost never near the console, not in the same room and often not the same building.
Jun 28, 2019 at 17:56 history edited Davislor CC BY-SA 4.0
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Jun 28, 2019 at 17:54 comment added Davislor @NicHartley Indeed! Or a daemon probably wants to tell the user at the console if it can’t start up, but send its routine messages to a log file.
Jun 28, 2019 at 17:49 comment added anon One very big example of this is the classic tar | gzip combo. If there's an error -- a file that can't be opened or something -- you don't want to corrupt the whole tarball with no indication to the user.
Jun 28, 2019 at 11:40 review Low quality posts
Jun 28, 2019 at 12:35
Jun 28, 2019 at 7:13 history edited Davislor CC BY-SA 4.0
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Jun 28, 2019 at 7:08 history answered Davislor CC BY-SA 4.0