tee(1) — Commands
NAME
tee − Displays the output of a program and copies it into a file
SYNOPSIS
tee [−ai] file ...
STANDARDS
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry standards as follows:
tee: XPG4, XPG4−UNIX
Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about industry standards and associated tags.
FLAGS
-aAdds the output to the end of file instead of writing over it.
-iIgnores the SIGINT signal.
PARAMETERS
fileStandard input is stored into, or appended to, the file specified.
[Digital] The tee command can accept up to 20 file arguments.
DESCRIPTION
The tee command reads standard input and writes to both standard output, and each specified file.
The tee command is useful when you wish to view program output as it is displayed, and also want to save it in a file. The tee command does not buffer output, so you may wish to pipe the output of tee to more if more than one full screen of data is anticipated.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables affect the execution of tee:
LANGProvides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the default locale is used. If any of the internationalization variables contain an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the variables had been defined.
LC_ALLIf set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the other internationalization variables.
LC_CTYPEDetermines the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multibyte characters in arguments).
LC_MESSAGESDetermines the locale for the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error.
NLSPATHDetermines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.
NOTES
If a write to any file fails, the exit status of tee will be non-zero. Writes to all other specified files may be successful, and operation will continue until standard input is exhausted.
EXAMPLES
1.To view and save the output from a command at the same time, enter:
lint program.c | tee program.lint
This displays the standard output of the command lint program.c at the terminal, and at the same time saves a copy of it in the file program.lint. If program.lint already exists, it is deleted and replaced.
2.To display and append to a file, enter:
lint program.c | tee -a program.lint
This displays the standard output of lint program.c at the terminal and at the same time appends a copy of it to the end of program.lint. If the file program.lint does not exist, it is created.
EXIT VALUES
The following exit values are returned:
0Successful completion
>0An error occurred