On Linux, other Unix-like systems, and on Windows, programs may open file descriptors (Linux terminology) or file handles (Windows terminology). Each file descriptor/handle is a numbered channel connected to a file or device.
By default, three channels are opened automatically by the shell when a process is started. These are:
0 - Standard Input (stdin) - this is the default input channel for the program 1 - Standard Output (stdout) - this is the default output channel for the program, used to output "normal" messages 2 - Standard Error (stderr) - this is the default error channel for the program, used to output error messages
Without redirection, all three of these descriptors/handles are connected to the terminal. Therefore, the command will get input from the terminal, send output messages to the terminal, and send error messages to the terminal.
Any of these descriptors/handles may be connected to a different file or device by adding symbols to the command line.
These are the most commonly-used symbols:
>file redirects stdout to the specified file, overwriting any existing content, or creating the file if it does not exist >>file redirects stdout to the specified file, appending to existing content, or creating the file if it does not exist <file redirects stdin from the specified file
Both the > and » symbols will create the file if it does not exist. If the file does exist, the > symbol will overwrite it, while the » symbol will append to it (add to the end of the file).
Examples on Linux:
$ date >now # redirect the output of the date command into the file named "now" $ cat now # display the file contents Tue 26 Sep 2028 01:14:02 PM EDT $ date >>now # append the output of the date command into the file "now" $ cat now # display the file contents - note that there are two dates Tue 26 Sep 2028 01:14:02 PM EDT Tue 26 Sep 2028 01:14:10 PM EDT $ date >>now # repeat a third time $ cat now Tue 26 Sep 2028 01:14:02 PM EDT Tue 26 Sep 2028 01:14:10 PM EDT Tue 26 Sep 2028 01:14:22 PM EDT $ date >now # redirect with a single > character - will overwrite $ cat now # display the file contents - note the old data was overwritten Tue 26 Sep 2028 01:14:28 PM EDT
The same example on Windows:
> date /t >now.txt > type now.txt 2028-09-26 > date /t >>now.txt > type now.txt 2028-09-26 2028-09-26 > date /t >>now.txt > type now.txt 2028-09-26 2028-09-26 2028-09-26 > date /t >now.txt > type now.txt 2023-09-26
To redirect a different file descriptior/handle, place the descriptor/handle number in front of the redirection symbol:
2>file redirects stderr (2) to the specified file, overwriting 2>>file redirects stderr (2) to the specified file, appending
Examples on Linux:
$ touch one two # create the files "one" and "two" $ rm three # make sure that no file named "three" exists rm: cannot remove 'three': No such file or directory $ ls -l one two three # this should succeed for 2 files, fail for 1 file ls: cannot access 'three': No such file or directory -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 13:17 one -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 13:17 two $ ls -l one two three >listing.txt # redirect output but not errors ls: cannot access 'three': No such file or directory $ cat listing.txt # view the saved output -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 13:17 one -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 13:17 two $ ls -l one two three >listing.txt 2>errors.txt # output and errors redirected separately $ cat listing.txt # view the saved output -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 13:17 one -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 13:17 two $ cat errors.txt # view the saved error messages ls: cannot access 'three': No such file or directory
To redirect one descriptor/handle to another descriptor/handle, use the syntax:
X>&Y
Where X is the descriptor/handle you're redirecting, and Y is the target descriptor/handle.
For example, on Linux:
$ ls -l one two three >all.txt 2>&1 # redirect stdout to all.txt, then redirect stderr to the same place as stdout $ cat all.txt # view the contents of all.txt ls: cannot access 'three': No such file or directory -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 13:17 one -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 13:17 two
Note that in this example, it is necessary to redirect stdout before redirecting stderr to the same location.
Piping is a special case of redirection, where the output (stdout) of one command is connected to the input (stdin) of another command. This is set up using the vertical-bar (pipe) symbol: | (this may look like a solid or a dashed vertical line, depending on the terminal font in use).
For example, on Windows, the output of the help command is more than one screen long. You could pipe the output of the help command into the input of the more command to view one screen of text at a time:
> help|more
For more information on a specific command, type HELP command-name
ASSOC Displays or modifies file extension associations.
ATTRIB Displays or changes file attributes.
BREAK Sets or clears extended CTRL+C checking.
BCDEDIT Sets properties in boot database to control boot loading.
CACLS Displays or modifies access control lists (ACLs) of files.
CALL Calls one batch program from another.
CD Displays the name of or changes the current directory.
CHCP Displays or sets the active code page number.
CHDIR Displays the name of or changes the current directory.
CHKDSK Checks a disk and displays a status report.
CHKNTFS Displays or modifies the checking of disk at boot time.
CLS Clears the screen.
CMD Starts a new instance of the Windows command interpreter.
COLOR Sets the default console foreground and background colors.
COMP Compares the contents of two files or sets of files.
COMPACT Displays or alters the compression of files on NTFS partitions.
CONVERT Converts FAT volumes to NTFS. You cannot convert the
current drive.
-- More --
Press the ENTER key to scroll by one line, the spacebar to scroll by one screen, or “q” to quit.
Similarly, on Linux, a long directory listing could be redirected to more, or better yet, the improved less command:
$ ls -l /etc | less total 2160 drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Jun 29 20:00 abrt -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 18 May 30 03:03 adjtime -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1529 Nov 27 2022 aliases drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 May 30 09:32 alliance drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Sep 3 20:00 alsa drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Aug 9 09:01 alternatives drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root 4096 Apr 13 17:47 anaconda -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 541 Jan 18 2023 anacrontab -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 269 Jan 17 2023 anthy-unicode.conf -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 833 Feb 10 2023 appstream.conf -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 55 Sep 3 20:00 asound.conf -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1 Jan 17 2023 at.deny drwxr-x---. 4 root root 4096 Aug 5 20:00 audit drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 May 30 03:03 authselect drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root 4096 Mar 18 2023 avahi drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 May 30 09:33 avrdude drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Aug 8 10:57 bash_completion.d -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 2638 Nov 27 2022 bashrc -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 535 Aug 6 20:00 bindresvport.blacklist drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Sep 17 20:00 binfmt.d drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Aug 24 20:00 bluetooth drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 May 30 09:32 bonobo-activation :
Like more, you can press ENTER to scroll by one line or SPACE to scroll by one screen, or “q” to quit; but you can also use the up/down arrow keys, or the PgUp/PgDn keys, to scroll in either direction by one line or one screen.
On Windows, to see the help lines that mention color, you could feed the output of the help command into the find command:
> help | find /i "color" COLOR Sets the default console foreground and background colors.
You can accomplish complex tasks by connecting a series of simple commands together using pipes. For example, the Linux ls -l command displays permissions in the second through tenth columns of output. You could pipe the output of this command through cut and cut out just those columns:
$ ls -l total 0 dr-xr-xr-x. 2 chris chris 100 Sep 26 14:22 apple -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 14:22 one -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 14:22 orange -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 14:22 plum -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 14:22 three -rw-r--r--. 1 chris chris 0 Sep 26 14:22 two $ ls -l | cut -c 2-10 otal 0 r-xr-xr-x rw-r--r-- rw-r--r-- rw-r--r-- rw-r--r-- rw-r--r--
However, this displays the “total …” line at the top of the output, missing the “t” letter in the first column. We can eliminate this with the command tail -n +2 which will give us the last part of the output starting at line 2 (therefore skipping the first line):
$ ls -l | cut -c 2-10 | tail -n +2 r-xr-xr-x rw-r--r-- rw-r--r-- rw-r--r-- rw-r--r-- rw-r--r--
If we wanted to see the filenames displayed alongside the permissions, we could take the output of ls -l, eliminate the first line (with tail as above), squeeze out multiple consecutive spaces so that they become a single space using tr -s “ ”, then use cut -d “ ” -f 1,9 to separate each line into fields delimited by the space (“ ”) character, selecting just fields 1 and 9:
$ ls -l | tail -n +2 | tr -s " " | cut -d " " -f 1,9 dr-xr-xr-x. apple -rw-r--r--. one -rw-r--r--. orange -rw-r--r--. plum -rw-r--r--. three -rw-r--r--. two
However, this displays an extra character in front of the file permission mode, and another extra character after the file permission mode (.), which can be eliminated by selecting the columns with another cut command:
$ ls -l | tail -n +2 | tr -s " " | cut -d " " -f 1,9 | cut -c2-10,12- r-xr-xr-x apple rw-r--r-- one rw-r--r-- orange rw-r--r-- plum rw-r--r-- three rw-r--r-- two