Linux and Unix tee command

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About tee
Syntax
Examples
Related commands
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About tee

Read from an input and write to a standard output and file.

Syntax

tee [OPTION]... [FILE]...

-a
--append
Append to the given FILEs, do not overwrite.
-iignore interrupt signals.
--helpDisplay the help screen.
--versionDisplay the version.

Examples

ls *.txt | wc -l | tee /dev/tty count.txt

In the above example the ls command would list all .txt files in the current directory, take a word count (wc) by the amount of lines (-l) and the output displayed to the /dev/tty (terminal) will be sent to the count.txt.

Note: Because the above example did not take advantage of the -a or append option if the count.txt file already existed it would have been overwritten.

Related commands

cat