bash: Redirect IO , but not with suffixes

Question

usually I use XX 2>error.log , but for debug purposes , I prefer the following syntax:

function XX()
{
    redirect_io_to "error.log"
}

Is there such syntax available ?

It's convenient because I setup my VIM to comment / uncomment a line with some shortcut key , I could easily comment this out / uncomment it.

Answer 1

Yes, but its not really pretty.

You can do exec 2> error.log to send stderr to a file

The problem is that you now have to clean it up and restore stderr, so at the bottom of the function you have to do exec 2>&1, which makes stderr go back to the terminal again.

function XX()
{
    exec 2> error.log
    foo bar
    exec 2>&1
}

The exec 2>&1 doesnt hurt to leave in, so you can just comment and uncomment the first exec.

---

Alternatively you could make the whole function execute in a subshell so that redirections are cleaned up automatically (the parenthesis in the below example start a subshell).

function XX()
{ (
    exec 2> error.log
    foo bar
) }

---

Lastly, you could just create an alias definition that you can comment and uncomment easily, and just put it right before the function declaration.

alias XX='XX 2> error.log'
function XX()
{
    foo bar
}

Answer 2

Nope, but you can always stack everything you need in one block:

function XX() {
 (
  some
  commands
  here
 ) 2>error.log
}