SUMMARY: Redirecting dump output (SunOS 101)

From: GARY L 'GARY' SWOFFORD (G.L.SWOFFORD@LaRC.NASA.GOV)
Date: Fri Jun 23 1995 - 09:55:20 CDT


Well, it seems everybody but me knew the answer to this one! The question
was how do you redirect the output from dump to a file? Here's the answer:

      dump_command > file_you_want_to_write_to 2>&1

The reason this works and plain ol' ">" doesn't is because dump echoes its
output to stderr NOT stdout. Why? No one knows. I checked the man pages
before putting this question on the airwaves, but I didn't know how close I
was to the answer. I looked again and found the relevant part in the SH(1)
man page. To wit:

--START OF MAN PAGE EXCERPT--

        <word blah blah...
>word blah blah...
>>word blah blah...
        <<[-]word blah blah...
        <&digit blah blah...
        <&- blah blah...
        
(Here's the fun part)
If any of the above is preceded by a digit, the file descriptor which will
be associated with the file is that specified by the digit (instead
of the default 0 or 1). For example:

        ... 2>&1

associates file descriptor 2 with the file currently associated
with file descriptor 1.

--END OF MAN PAGE EXCERPT--

This says nothing about stdout or stderr. I'm assuming file descriptor 1 is
stdout and 2 is stderr. When I read that the first time it left me totally
confused. It still does. Anyway, I put the "2>&1" thingy in my borne shell
script and everything is humming nicely. A zillion thanks to the zillion
people who answered my question.

               [~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]
               [ Gary Swofford ]
               [ DynCorp I & ET - Hampton VA USA ]
               [ g.l.swofford@LaRC.NASA.GOV ]
               [_________________________________]



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