Why doesn't my script work when I redirect stdout?

Question

I'm using Mathematica Home Edition 9.0.1 on Mac OS X 10.8.2.

I have this script:

#!/Applications/Mathematica.app/Contents/MacOS/MathematicaScript -script

exportableDate[date_] := 10000 date[[1]] + 100 date[[2]] + date[[3]];

dividendTable = FinancialData[$ScriptCommandLine[[2]], "Dividend", All]; 
    exportableDividendTable = { exportableDate[#[[1]]], #[[2]] }& /@ dividendTable;
    Export[$Output, exportableDividendTable, "CSV"];

When I run it without redirecting stdout, it works:

$ ./dividendsForSymbol INTC
StringForm["Initializing `1` indices ....", "FinancialData"]
19921026,0.00313
19930126,0.00313
19930426,0.00313
19930726,0.00313
19931026,0.00313
19940126,0.00313
...

When I redirect the output to a file, it just exits immediately without producing any output:

$ ./dividendsForSymbol INTC > out
    $ echo $?
    0
    $ ls -l out
-rw-r--r--  1 mayoff  staff  0 Mar  9 17:18 out

Why is it failing when I redirect the output? Or, how can I diagnose the problem?

Answer 1

I think this is a bug in the script execution under version 9. You can work around it by using a wrapper for your script, which loads it using the -run option.

For example, save the following as an executable file:

/Applications/Mathematica.app/Contents/MacOS/MathKernel -noprompt -run "commandLineArg={\"$1\"}; <<dividendsForSymbol; Exit[]"

Then in your existing file dividendsForSymbol, replace $ScriptCommandLine[[2]] with commandLineArg[[1]].

Now if you execute

./dividendsForSymbolWrap INTC >out1.m

the output file should contain the data as they were printed to the terminal without the redirect.

Answer 2

In the end, I just changed my script to a bash script that feeds a here-document to MathKernel:

#!/bin/bash

export symbol="$1"
/Applications/Mathematica.app/Contents/MacOS/MathKernel -noprompt <<\EOF | grep -v ^StringForm
    exportableDate[date_] := 10000 date[[1]] + 100 date[[2]] + date[[3]];

    dividendTable = FinancialData[Environment["symbol"], "Dividend", All];
    exportableDividendTable = { exportableDate[#[[1]]], #[[2]] }& /@ dividendTable;
    Export[$Output, exportableDividendTable, "CSV"];
EOF