encfsctl cat outputs debug information and prompts to stdout

[RunasSudo]

Environment

• Windows version: Windows 7, wine
• Processor architecture: x86, x64
• Encfs4win version: 1.10.1-RC6
• Dokan version (legacy, modern): modern

  Description

encfsctl cat outputs debug information and prompts to stdout, along with the decrypted data.

Expected behavior

encfsctl cat should output debug information and prompts to stderr, with only decrypted data printed to stdout. This is the behaviour of the Linux version.

Steps to reproduce problem

1. Run encfsctl -v cat [dir] [file] > out.txt.
2. No output will be displayed at all, while all data (including debug messages and the EncFS Password: prompt) is stored in out.txt.

Not-at-all-robust workaround:

encfsctl cat [dir] [file] | tail -c+17 > out.txt

[jetwhiz]

When you mention the LInux version, are you referring to the version from the official Linux repositories, or the version directly from https://github.com/vgough/encfs (the latest commit)?

I'm thinking this is an issue due to easylogging++, which appears to support "To_Standard_Output" but not sending to standard error. If that's the case, than the latest from vgough/encfs should also have this issue.

[jetwhiz]

I'm not sure if we can fix the "prompts to stdout" issue, since this is the correct behavior (the prompt goes to stdout as it should, but you're redirecting stdout to a file). In this case, it is best to use -S to retrieve the password without prompts.

[RunasSudo]

I'm using encfs official release 1.8.1 on Arch Linux. Prompts in that version are written to stderr, so even if stdout is redirected, password prompts are visible. I'm not sure about debug information.

[jetwhiz]

Ok, I can fix the prompts (by sending them to stderr), but the issue of verbose debugging info going to stdout also exist in encfs upstream. I'm going to open an issue upstream so this can be fixed at the source.

[jetwhiz]

This should be fixed as of -RC7