Selecting text in a SuSE shell

Question

I have a problem. An application has spat a whole load of log text into a Shell window that needs to be captured. If we could skip passed the "probably shouldn't have had an application output it's stdout anywhere other than a log file", is there a tool/command that I can use to capture the program output?

Other than highlighting all of the text with a mouse and copying to a text file. There are 250,000 lines... :)

Answer 1

If you can run the program again, you have 3 options:

1. If you don't need to see the output as the program runs, use simple redirection (as jonsca has already suggested) :

   $ yourVerboseProgram > anyNameForYourLogFile

2. If you want to see the program's output as it runs, you have two (at least) options:

   a) Run it as described above, while in a second terminal running tail -f yourLogFile

   b) ('b' for 'better') Use tee:

   $ yourVerboseProgram | tee anyNameForYourLogFile

3. If 2. applies and the program is interactive (needs your input as it runs), use the script program:

   $ script aLogFile.log
   Script started, file is aLogFile.log
   $ yourVerboseProgram
   

   (the program running... And exiting.) Then you exit the script:

   $ exit
   Script done, file is aLogFile.log
   

   The only problem with option 3 is that everything is being logged, including your keystrokes like pressing "Backspace" etc.