Quick Tip

Tame Your Terminal Output: Unify stderr and stdout

Challenge: When running commands or scripts, error messages (stderr) and normal output (stdout) are often displayed separately, making it difficult to capture all output for logging or analysis.

The Solution: Use the shell redirection operator `2>&1` to merge standard error (file descriptor 2) into standard output (file descriptor 1).

your_command &> output.log

Why it works: This redirection operator tells the shell to send both stderr and stdout to the specified file. Alternatively, `your_command 2>&1 > output.log` achieves the same result by first redirecting stderr to stdout and then redirecting stdout to the file.

Pro-Tip: Use `&>` (Bash 4+) for a more concise way to redirect both stdout and stderr to a file. For older shells, `your_command > output.log 2>&1` is the standard approach.

Linux Tips & Tricks | © ngelinux.com | 6/19/2026