standard output for command lines applications

[vincentberenz]

Dear all,

When running a command line application, usually the output can be caught using | or redirected to a file using > or >>.
But sometime it is not. As an example, if you use the application "dict" like :


dict coach >> foo.txtthen "foo.txt" contains definitions of "couch" and so on.

But if you use a word that is not in the dictionary :


dict coah >> foo.txtthen nothing is printed in foo.txt and other information are displayed in the console.
(in that particular case :
"No definitions found for "coah", perhaps you mean:
gcide: CoA Corah coach Noah COOH cosh Coag Coak Coal Coat Coax
wn: coach noah cosh coal coat coax")

It turns out it is this output I am trying to catch in a file.

Is there any way I can redirect this output ? (for running into scripts).

Many thx

[falconindy]

This is because there are two different methods of output, stdout and stderr. I won't get into details about how they differ, but you have a few options as to how to capture it:

Capture only output sent to stderr

dict coah 2> foo.bar

Capture output from stderr and stdout in different files

dict coah 2> foo.bar > foo.baz

Capture output from stderr and stdout in the same file

dict coah > foo.bar 2>&1

And in Bash only, this shortcut exists for the above

dict coah &> foo.bar

In any of the examples above, you can freely replace a single > with a double >> to append.

[vincentberenz]

that's working great ! thanks a lot