Quick Tip

Taming Terminal Output: Unify stderr and stdout

Challenge: When debugging scripts or analyzing command output, you often need to see both standard error (stderr) and standard output (stdout) together. Separately, these can be hard to correlate and understand the full picture.

The Solution: Use the `2>&1` redirection operator.

your_command 2>&1 | less

Why it works: `2` represents stderr, `1` represents stdout. `2>&1` redirects file descriptor 2 (stderr) to the same location as file descriptor 1 (stdout). Piping this combined output to `less` allows you to scroll through and analyze it easily.

Pro-Tip: You can also redirect this combined output to a file by replacing `| less` with `> output.log`.

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