decrypting to stdout does not work properly

[jman]

Fourhundred Thecat via Gnupg-users <gnupg-users at gnupg.org> writes:

> Also, is there a command for unlocking the agent without actually
> decrypting anything ?

Hi,

funny that I asked exactly the same question a few years ago. I wanted to check if my keyring was 
unlocked before doing any actual operation.
Apparently the solution is to send an SCD command and then try to to what you really want to do 
(i.e. decrypting a key).

You might find this thread useful:
https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2020-December/064520.html

SCDaemon documentation (with all the commands) at:
https://www.gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg/Scdaemon-Protocol.html

In the end I have scripted the unlocking of a smartcard but the resulting script is a bit convoluted 
because the output of gpg-connect-agent is not super useful.

HTH