Writing Error Messages to a file

Question

we want to write an error message to a file and are wondering what steps to take in doing so...
thanks in advance

Answer 1

You can try calling System.setOut() to a custom PrintStream which prints to both a file and stdout.
The benefit of this is that you can keep calling System.out.*, or System.err.* and it prints normally in addition to printing to a file.
I wrote a (buggy) logger you can try out which does this. You can use it, although I recommend you look into writing one yourself, as this is buggy (and, knowing myself, probably poorly coded):
SVN Repository:
http://timothyb89.homelinux.org/kdrepos/log5j/
Custom PrintStream:
http://timothyb89.homelinux.org/kdrepos/log5j/src/org/log5j/Logger.java
(The LogFileManager ( http://timothyb89.homelinux.org/kdrepos/log5j/src/org/log5j/LogFileManager.java ) does the actual printing to the logfile)
Note that you might want to try using System.setErr() instead of System.setOut() (and changing calls my Logger made to System.out to System.err as well).
Hope it works (or you find a better way) ;-)