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Pipe to multiple files, but not stdout

Asked 7 years, 11 months ago
Active 2 years ago
Viewed 8k times
11
2

I want to pipe stdout to multiple files, but keep stdout itself quiet. tee is close but it prints to
both the files and stdout

$ echo 'hello world' | tee aa bb cc

hello world

This works but I would prefer something simpler if possible

$ echo 'hello world' | tee aa bb cc >/dev/null

bash stdout tee
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asked Mar 7 '13 at 7:15
Steven Penny
78.6k4848 gold badges303303 silver badges347347 bronze badges

 3

In tee aa bb cc, tee has to write 3 files, and you still have bash redirecting standard
output to a file. In tee aa bb > cc, you have the bash redirect, but tee only needs to
write to 2 files. I'd say the 2nd is more efficient, but only in the strictest sense; you'll
never notice the difference. – chepner Mar 7 '13 at 13:39

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2 Answers
17

You can simply use:

echo 'hello world' | tee aa bb > cc

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answered Mar 7 '13 at 7:22

anishsane
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5

You can also close tee stdout output by writing to /dev/full

echo 'hello world' | tee aa bb cc >/dev/full

or by closing stdout.

echo 'hello world' | tee aa bb cc >&-

Be however aware that you will get either tee: standard output: No space left on
device or tee: standard output: Bad file descriptor warnings.

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edited Jan 31 '19 at 21:08
answered Nov 20 '15 at 2:03

Jirka
10711 silver badge33 bronze badges

 1

/dev/null, not /dev/full – anishsane Jan 26 '16 at 10:59

 2

Not. it's indeed /dev/full so that the pipe is closed. With /dev/null, tee will still
continue to write, even if there is no space left for files aa, bb and cc. – Jirka Jan 31 '19
at 21:08

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