From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 23:03:32 GMT
Subject: Re: test suite failures because cmp behaves oddly
Message-ID: <7v3b54s7y3.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <200702172225.12758.johannes.sixt@telecom.at>

Johannes Sixt <johannes.sixt@telecom.at> writes:

> Does anyone know how 'cmp' can signal success when its output is redirected 
> to /dev/null, even if the compared files are different?
>
> $ cmp M.sum actual7.sum; echo $?
> M.sum actual7.sum differ: char 20, line 2
> 1
> $ cmp M.sum actual7.sum > /dev/null; echo $?
> 0
> ...
> Has anyone seen something like this?

I vaguely recall this reported long time ago from one of the
regulars on the list, but googling or gmane search came up
empty.