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Both view and pipe the file without saving to disk

Terminal - Both view and pipe the file without saving to disk
cat /path/to/some/file.txt | tee /dev/pts/0 | wc -l
2009-11-07 22:24:28
User: atoponce
Functions: cat tee wc
2
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Both view and pipe the file without saving to disk

This is a cool trick to view the contents of the file on /dev/pts/0 (or whatever terminal you're using), and also send the contents of that file to another program by way of an unnamed pipe. All the while, you've not bothered saving any extra data to disk, like you might be tempted to do with sed or grep to filter output.

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There are 4 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives

Know a better way?

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What others think

Use '/dev/tty': it was designed for this purpose. The device 'tty' always points to the process' controlling terminal device. In your example, /dev/tty would internally point to /dev/pts/0.

Comment by arcege 184 weeks and 3 days ago

Ahh, I didn't know that. That's good to know. Also, after posting this, I realized later that I'm using 'cat' when I don't need to. Rather:

tee /dev/tty < /path/to/some/file | wc -l

would be more appropriate.

Comment by atoponce 184 weeks and 3 days ago

Your point of view

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