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4.2 Redirection

Redirection in Eshell is similar to that of other command shells. You can use the output redirection operators > and >>, but there is not yet any support for input redirection. In the cases below, fd specifies the file descriptor to redirect; if not specified, file descriptor 1 (standard output) will be used by default.

> dest

fd> dest

Redirect output to dest, overwriting its contents with the new output.

>> dest

fd>> dest

Redirect output to dest, appending it to the existing contents of dest.

>>> dest

fd>>> dest

Redirect output to dest, inserting it at the current mark if dest is a buffer, at the beginning of the file if dest is a file, or otherwise behaving the same as >>.

&> dest

>& dest

Redirect both standard output and standard error to dest, overwriting its contents with the new output.

&>> dest

>>& dest

Redirect both standard output and standard error to dest, appending it to the existing contents of dest.

&>>> dest

>>>& dest

Redirect both standard output and standard error to dest, inserting it like with >>> dest.

>&other-fd

fd>&other-fd

Duplicate the file descriptor other-fd to fd (or 1 if unspecified). The order in which this is used is significant, so

command > file 2>&1

redirects both standard output and standard error to file, whereas

command 2>&1 > file

only redirects standard output to file (and sends standard error to the display via standard output’s original handle).

Eshell supports redirecting output to several different types of targets:

• files, including virtual targets (see below);
• buffers (see Buffers in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual);
• markers (see Markers in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual);
• processes (see Processes in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual); and
• symbols (see Symbols in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).

• Virtual Targets