4 ms·

make 2>&1 | head (or less) is a common occurrence in my .bash_history :(

• waynecochran 13y ago
  I actually have this written on the corner of my whiteboard because I can never remember bash's syntax for piping out stderr!
  • JoshTriplett 13y ago
    If you don't mind being bash-specific, you can shorten 2>&1 | to just |& .
    • coherentpony 13y ago
      Good lord. I think you just changed my life.
    • praptak 13y ago
      Similarly &> works for redirecting both stderr and stdout to a file. >& is the alternate, less preferred syntax.
  • daxelrod 13y ago
    The phrase "two greater amper one" seems to help me. My tendency otherwise is to type the ampersand before the greater-than.
  • mrich 13y ago
    Perhaps it will help you to understand some background: In a Unix process stdout typically is file descriptor 1 and stderr is fd 2. So you are saying: Redirect from fd 2 into fd 1.
    • 0x0 13y ago
      The biggest problem is mixing up >& and &> ...which ends up leaving a bunch of files called "1" around with a runaway background process :(
  • coldpie 13y ago
    Yeah, it's tricky. I remember it by breaking it into two pieces. "2>" means redirect stderr (file descriptor 2) to the following token. "&1" is the token for stdout (kinda like the address-of operator). So taken together, "2>&1" means redirect stderr to stdout. Bash-only shortcuts like &> don't improve the situation :)