I can get a program compiled with Turbo Pascal to use the existing stderr handle for output like this:

PROGRAM Meta2(Input, Output, Error);
..
   Assign(Error, '');
   Rewrite(Error);
   TextRec(Error).Handle:= 2;

or in the case of Delphi:

program Meta2;
..
   Assign(Error, '');
   Rewrite(Error);
   TTextRec(Error).Handle:= GetStdHandle(STD_ERROR_HANDLE);

Is there a correct and portable way to do this using FPC?

I would think that

TTextRec(Error).Handle:=TTextRec(StdOut).Handle

Does the trick ?

Michael.

TextRec(StdErr) etc... it works and is certainly good enough. Program self-checks OK so I'm fairly confident it's ported correctly, now to start off with the object wrappers to see if it works in Lazarus as well as it does in Delphi.

Thanks for the help everybody, I'll go back to lurking quietly.