How to capture shell output to text file?

Question

In linux I can type in echo "hello" >& text.output and get text output in a file.

How can I get this kind of output in Windows 8?

Is there a way to tell error from output?

My motivation is trying to log the output of tracert and investigate difference between Windows 8 and Windows 7.

Possible duplicate of superuser.com/questions/99066/…
– Oliver Salzburg
Nov 7, 2012 at 21:16 — Oliver Salzburg, Nov 7, 2012 at 21:16

Alexey Ivanov · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-07 19:15:13Z

6

The same way as in Linux:

echo "Hello" >text.output

Errors usually printed to stderr stream (it is #2). You can capture stderr stream:

del 1.txt 2>text.output

If the file 1.txt does not exist, text.output will contain Could not find 1.txt.

You can redirect stdout to stderr:

echo "Hello" 2>&1

Or stderr to stdout:

echo "Hello" 1>&2

P.S. I'm not sure your command would work in Linux. Anyway echo "hello" >& text.output generates a syntax error: >& was unexpected at this time.

answered Nov 7, 2012 at 18:32

Alexey Ivanov

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It works on Gentoo and SLES. It might not be very strict POSIX.
– Mikhail
Nov 7, 2012 at 18:47
3

Little-known feature: The redirection operator can go anywhere on the line.
– Oliver Salzburg
Nov 7, 2012 at 19:18
@OliverSalzburg Haven't known about it. Thanks!
– Alexey Ivanov
Nov 7, 2012 at 19:25

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Synetech · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-07 21:01:51Z

3

The shell in Windows now is very similar with BASH on Linux. So you can just do

echo "Hello" > text.txt

Or, run your program, and let the system output write to text.txt:

run_program > text.txt

If you need to track the error, use the following:

run_program 2> error.txt

More information and examples could be found here. I/O Redirection

Synetech

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answered Nov 7, 2012 at 20:14

Dev Perfecular

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