avoid creating empty STDOUT and STDERR files

Question

When you specify STDOUT and STDERR files...

cmd.exe < "C:\in.txt" 1> "C:\out.txt" 2> "C:\err.txt"

...you end up creating a file even if that particular file stream was never written to within the console app (cmd.exe). Can this be avoided? I would rather not produce empty files.

It may be a ugly workaround, but you could check the size of stdout and stderr and erase them if they are empty at the end of your program — DrakaSAN, Sep 11 '13 at 15:41

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:50

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The files are created by the cmd.com before running your program, so you have no control over it. The best you can do is making a batch file that "cleans up" after running your process by deleting out.txt and/or err.txt when they are empty.

Here is a link to an answer explaining how to detect and delete empty files.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:50

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answered Sep 11 '13 at 15:41

Sergey Kalinichenko

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avoid creating empty STDOUT and STDERR files

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