[Python-Dev] Incorrect documentation of the raw_input built-in function

[Mike Kent]

Recently I was trying to debug an old python program who's maintenance I
inherited.  I was using the quick-and-dirty method of putting some 'print
>>sys.stderr' statements in the code, and then running the command with
'2>filename' appended to the end of the command line.  Imagine my surprise
to see that all of the prompt text from the program's raw_input calls were
also disappearing from the screen output, and appearing in the stderr
output routed to the file.

The latest documentation for raw_input states "If the prompt argument is
present, it is written to standard output without a trailing newline."
I posted a question regarding the observed behavior to comp.lang.python
and Gabriel Genellina (thanks Gabriel!) pointed out that despite the
documentation, raw_input was hard-coded to always output its prompt text
to stderr.

This raises two questions:
1. Shouldn't the current documentation be corrected to state that raw_input
writes its prompt to standard error?
2. Is this really the hard-coded behavior we want?  I don't think my
use-case is that odd; in fact, what I find very odd is that the prompt
output is send to stderr.  I mean, I'm printing the prompt for a question,
not some error message. Can there not at least be an optional parameter to
indicate that you want the output sent to stdout rather than stderr?