Sys::OutPut is a Perl 5 module which defines the subroutines
"out", "put", "err", "talk", and "debug", all of which perform
printf-formatting of their arguments to either STDOUT or STDERR,
as appropriate, with or without trailing newlines, and
possibly depending upon the $quiet or $debug variables.

Basically, I don't like to write "printf STDERR" or "printf STDOUT", so
these little routines do it for me.  And, they take care of ensuring
that newlines are output when appropriate.

You would be surprised how much easier writing Perl scripts is when
you use these little routines.  The "debug" routine is particularly
useful when you can code like this:

    next if debug "I got this far."

The module has embedded POD text with which man or HTML pages can be
created.

For detailed usage information, you can do:

    pod2man Sys::OutPut.pm | nroff -man 

The module is accompanied with a Makefile, this README, a test program
(test.pl), a reference test output file, and the GNU License, under
which this software is freely available.

The archives are available on:

    ftp://hub.ucsb.edu/pub/prog/perl/Sys-OutPut-$VER.shar
    ftp://hub.ucsb.edu/pub/prog/perl/Sys-OutPut-$VER.tar.gz

where $VER is the latest version.

Contributions or improvements are welcome.
_______________________________________
Alan K. Stebbens <aks@hub.ucsb.edu>
College of Engineering
University of California, Santa Barbara
