Linux allocates three I/O streams for each process: the standard input,
the standard input, and the standard error, which are associated with
the descriptors 0,1 and 2, respectively. By default, the standard output
and the standard error are tied to the user's screen. Thus, if you type
the "cat" command followed by a nonexistent filename, you will see the
following error message on your screen:

$cat nonexistentfile
cat : nonexistentfile not found

It is possible to redirect the standard error and the standard output to
separate destinations. For example, you can direct all error messages to
a file for future reference.

Redirecting Standard Output
To redirect the standard output, use the > operator followed by the
destination file or device. The following cat command direct the output
to a file called mylog:

$ cat intro >mylog

Notice that by default, the > operator redirects the standard output.
Therefore, error messages resulting from the command above will still
appear on the screen. In other words, the command:

$ cat intro >mylog

is interpreted as:

$ cat intro 1> mylog

Redirecting Standard Error
To redirect the standard, use the following command:

$ cat intro 2> errlog

In this case, all error messages are written to the file errlog. If you
wish to redirect error messages to a specific terminal, you can do it
like this:

$cat doc > /dev/tty13

As with other shell commands, you may run the cat command in the
background by appending an ampersand at the end:

$cat doc > /dev/tty13 &

The same effect of redirecting the standard error to a device or a file
can be achieved by using the >> operator too. For example:

$ cat intro 2>> errlog

Redirecting Standard Input
As previously noted, the standard input is associated with the user's
keyboard. You can override this setting by like this:

$ tolowercase

In this example, the program tolowercase reads its input from the file
mydocument rather than the keyboard. Note that the program itself isn't
aware that its standard input has been redirected. Furthermore, the
string " passed in argv. Consequently, every scanf(), getch(), and similar
syscalls will read their data from mydocument.

» posted by ITworld staff

ITworld

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