Ubuntu Unleashed 2013 Edition: Covering 12.10 and 13.04, Eighth Edition

Redirecting Output and Input

Sometimes, the output of a command is too long to view on one screen. At other times, there might be an advantage to preserving the output as a file, perhaps to be edited later. You can’t do that using cat or less, at least not using them as we have described so far. Good news: It is possible using redirection.

Commands take their input and give their output in a standard place. This is called standard input and standard output. By default, this is configured as the output of a keyboard for standard input because it comes in to the computer from the keyboard, and the screen for standard output because the computer displays the results of a command to the user using that screen. Standard input and standard output ...