Hi. What is the difference in using >

fprintf (stderr, "Error reading file" );
exit(1);

when dealing with error checking while opening a file?
as opposed to using >

printf ("Error reading file");
exit(1);

wouldn't they both accomplish the same thing (printing an error to
standard output)?
I can see that in the 'fprintf' something is sent to stderr. But what is sent to stderr? exit(1) ?

Just basically want to know the advantage of using the fprintf as opposed to just printing "Error reading file" and sending an 'exit(1)'.

thanks

well stderr means Standard Error. it's a stream where error messages go, as opposed to stdout - Standard Out where program output goes. if you are writing a program that reads output from another for example, you don't want to necessarily be given error messages as your input. you only want the data you want. by having seperate streams you can easily sort output types out.

try.....

ls file_that_doesnt_exist file_that_does_exist > file_out 2> file_err

now, file_err should contain an error message saying the first file doesn't exist, while file_out contains standard ls output for the second file. This is because the two types of output are placed in different streams, and in our command we split that stream up ( > redirects stdout, 2> redirects stderr). you might not think it's hugely useful right now (although i hope you can see the potential benefits) but when you get more involved, these things become very important.

thank you very much acid!