ls -l *.txt | wc -l | tee count.txt
ls -l *.txt | wc -l > tee count.txt
I am learning basic Unix commands. I thought those two commands mentioned would do the same thing, but they do not. Only the first command writes to count.txt. How come the output redirection used in the second command is not doing anything?
ls -l *.txt | wc -l | tee count.txt
In first example:
The ls command lists all files in the current directory that have the filename extension .txt, one file per line; this output is piped to wc, which counts the lines and outputs the number; this output is piped to tee, which writes the output to the terminal, and writes the same information to the file count.txt. If count.txt already exists, it is overwritten.
In your second example:
ls -l *.txt | wc -l > tee count.txt
In this example tee will be treated as file name instead of a command and output of wc -l will be redirected to the newly crated file tee and will contain the output of wc -l and string count.txt.
If you want the same behaviour as in the first example then right way of doing this would be:
ls -l *.txt | wc -l > count.txt
> itself is sufficient to redirect the output to count.txt file
