9 tee Command Examples in Linux

Linux Tee command is a command line tool, it reads from the standard input and write the result to standard output and files at the same time.In other words, we can say, tee command in Linux used for hitting two birds with one stone: reading from standard input and printing the result on a file and to standard output at the same time. What do we mean by this? In this guide, we shed more light on Linux tee command and use a few examples to demonstrate its usage.

Tee Command Syntax

The tee command syntax is quite simple and takes the following format:

$ tee OPTIONS filename

Here are some of the options that you can use with tee command:

linux-tee-command-options

In tee command’s syntax, filename refers to one or more files.

With that in mind let’s check out a few examples on how the command is used.

Example 1) Basic usage of tee command

As described earlier, the main function of the tee command is to display the output of a command (stdout) and save it in a file. In the example below, the command we are inspecting the block devices in our system and piping the results to tee command which display the output to the terminal while simultaneously saving it on a new file called block_devices.txt

$ lsblk | tee block_devices.txt

lsblk-tee-command-output-linux

Feel free to examine the contents of the block_devices.txt file using the cat command as shown:

$ cat block_devices.txt

Example 2) Save command output to multiple files using tee

Additionally, you can write a command’s output to several space-separated files as shown in the syntax below.

$ command | tee file1 file2 file3 . . .

In the following example, we have invoked the hostnamectl command to print the hostname of our system among other details and save the standard output to two files file1.txt, and file2.txt

$ hostnamectl | tee file1.txt file2.txt

tee-command-output-files-linux

Once again, you can confirm the existence of the output in the two files using the cat command as shown:

$ cat file1.txt
$ cat file2.txt

Example 3) Suppress output of tee command

If you want to hide or suppress tee command from printing the output on the screen then redirect the output to /dev/null as shown:

$ command | tee file > /dev/null

For example,

$ df -Th | tee file4.txt > /dev/null

tee-command-suppress-output

Example 4) Append output to a file with tee command

By default, tee command overwrites the contents of a file. To append the output and prevent the erasure of the current content, use the -a or –append options.

$ command | tee -a file

In the second command, as shown, we have appended the output of date command to file1.txt which already contains the information about the USB devices on the system.

$ date | tee -a file1.txt

Append-output-tee-command-linux

Example 5) Use tee together with sudo command

Suppose that as a sudo user, you want to write on a file that is owned by the root user. Naturally, any elevated operation will require that you invoke the sudo user before the command.

To achieve this, simply prefix the tee command with sudo as shown below.

$ echo "10.200.50.20 db-01" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts/

tee-with-sudo-command-linux

So, tee receives the output of echo command on the left and elevates this using the sudo command which eventually appends the output to the file.

Example 6) Redirect output of one command to another using tee command

Using tee command, we can easily redirect the output of one command to another command. Here output of first command will act as input for second command. Example is shown below:

$ grep 'root' /etc/passwd | tee /tmp/passwd.tmp | wc -l
2
$ cat /tmp/passwd.tmp
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
operator:x:11:0:operator:/root:/sbin/nologin
$

Example 7) Save changes to a file within vi editor with tee command

Let’s assume you are working as non-root user and you are making changes to root owned file and you forget to put sudo In front of command and now you want to save changes, example is demonstrated below:

$ vi /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1   localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4
192.168.1.60   mail.linuxtechi.com
192.168.1.50   ns.linuxtechi.com
192.168.1.40    pxe.linuxtechi.com

While saving the changes to the file you will get read-only message,

save-changes-error-read-only-file-linux

Now to save the changes to /etc/hosts file within the vi editor, run

:w !sudo tee %

It will prompt you to enter password of the user, if the user has sudo rights then changes will be saved.

Save-Changes-to-file-tee-commmand-vi-editor

Prompt-sudo-user-password-tee-vi-editor

Example 8) Ignore Interrupt signal while using tee command

Using ‘-i’ option in tee command can ignore interrupt signal (CTRL-C), example is shown below:

$ ping -c 5 linuxtechi.com  | tee -i /tmp/pingtest.tmp

tee-command-ignore-interrupt-signal-linux

Example 9) tee command usage in shell script

Tee command is also used frequently in shell scripts, one of common example is listed below:

$ vi basic-script.sh
#!/bin/bash
LOGFILE=/tmp/basic-logs-$(date +%d%m%Y)
FLAVOR=$(cat /etc/*-release  | grep -w 'NAME=' | cut -d"=" -f2 | awk '{print $1}'| sed 's/"//g')
if [ $FLAVOR == CentOS ];
then
   dmesg | grep -i 'error' | tee -a $LOGFILE
   grep -i 'installed' /var/log/dnf.log | tee -a $LOGFILE
else
   echo 'do nothing'
fi

tee-command-shell-script-linux

As we can see in above linux shell script, we are using tee command to append the outputs of two commands to a log file only if the OS is CentOS.

Conclusion

This wraps up today’s topic. Feel free to weigh in. Your feedback is most welcome. In this guide, we covered the Linux tee command.

Read Also: 14 Grep Command Examples in Linux

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