How can I view the full exception thrown by a script in the shell?

Question

When I'm running my ruby script, I'm getting an exception. However, since I'm running Ubuntu in VMware Fusion, I can't resize my terminal window so I can't see the whole excecption.

How can I view the whole thing?

I've tried

ruby script.rb > out.txt

and

ruby script.rb | more

but neither seem to work.

Answer 1

In Unix, normal program output is usually written to the stdout stream and errors go to stderr. (Input is called stdin.)

• In sh/bash shells (also in Windows cmd.exe), use 2> to redirect stderr:

  ruby script.rb >out.txt 2>err.txt

  To point both to the same place, 2>&1 can be used:

  ruby script.rb >out.txt 2>&1 # (order matters)

  ruby script.rb 2>&1 | more

• In bash, use >& to redirect both at once:

  ruby script.rb >& out.txt

  ruby script.rb |& more

---

In most Linux terminals you can use Shift+PageUp and Shift+PageDown to scroll the text.