[Nottingham] Backups: How do you do yours?

[Martin]

Some very good comments all round.


> An educational note about stream redirection, the command:
>
> command >>logfile.txt
>
> Will only append stdout to the file, anything printed on stderr will be lost.
>
> To capture both streams, the following command can be used:
>
> command 2>&1>>logfile.txt

That doesn't work as intended...

To redirect both stdout and stderr to a single file, you need to use:

command >>logfile.txt 2>&1

That is: stdout is redirected to a file AND THEN stderr is redirected
to the stdout-to-file.

There's also a short form for doing that:

command &>>logfile.txt


The BASH syntax is quite an irregular mess! Almost as bad as a human language!!

Cheers,
Martin