Question:

How do I avoid the creation of ferret.jnl files?  Can I have the journal output go to another file?

Solution:

The most direct way to avoid creating ferret.jnl files is to start Ferret or Pyferret with the -nojnl startup switch.

> ferret -nojnl

Then within the session, you can always turn journaling back on with SET MODE JOURNAL:<filename> to turn on journaling.  The filename is optional.

Or, within any Ferret script you can "cancel mode journal" to turn off journaling; however a Ferret journal file will have been created when you started Ferret. To avoid this altogether, you can add commands to your .ferret startup file.

Insert into $HOME/.ferret:

\cancel mode verify
cancel mode journal ! turn off journaling
sp rm -f ferret.jnl
set mode/last verify

The rm command deletes the journal file created upon entering Ferret. Within a Ferret session you can always start recording commands in a journal file with

yes? set mode journal

or name your journal files with

yes? set mode journal:myjnl.jnl

See also SET REDIRECT for more options to control sending Ferret output to files.