output from 'builtin' command not redirectable

output from 'builtin' command not redirectable

[Ian Macdonald]

Hi,

Observe the following:

$ builtin foo &>/dev/null
zsh: no such builtin: foo

No matter what I do, I can't redirect the output of the 'builtin'
command.

I want to use this in a script, where the command passed to builtin
sometimes causes an error. Since I'm only interested in the return
value, I don't want the error to be displayed.

Should I file this as a bug somewhere? I couldn't quickly locate the
place to do this.

Ian
-- 
Ian Macdonald               | Ginsburg's Law:  At the precise moment you 
ian@caliban.org             | take off your shoe in a shoe store, your 
                            | big toe will pop out of your sock to see
                            | what's going on. 
                            | 

Re: output from 'builtin' command not redirectable

[Zefram]

Ian Macdonald wrote:
>$ builtin foo &>/dev/null
>zsh: no such builtin: foo
>
>No matter what I do, I can't redirect the output of the 'builtin'
>command.

{ builtin foo; } &>/dev/null

Unfortunately this technique isn't portable to every shell, but it works
just as you'd expect in zsh.

-zefram