learning which symmetric cipher via --status-fd when decrypting

[vedaal at nym.hush.com]

>Message: 8
>Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2011 02:28:05 -0500
>From: Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg at fifthhorseman.net>

>is there a way to get information about which symmetric cipher was 

>used on an encrypted message when decrypting?

There may be other direct ways, but a simple unexpected way, is to 
use the option of --show-session-key.

Upon decryption, GnuPG shows the number of the symmetric algorithm, 
followed by a colon, followed by the session key string
(i.e, '2:' indicates that 3DES is the symmetric cipher used). 


vedaal