Write to more than one file at once with tee

Write to more than one file at once with tee

In general, with static data, this is not a problem. You simply repeat the write operation. With dynamic data, again, this is not that much of a problem. You capture the output into a temporary variable and then write it to a number of files.

But there’s an easier and faster way of doing it, without redirection and repetitive write operations. The answer: tee.

tee is a very useful utility that duplicates pipe content. Now, what makes tee really useful is that it can append data to existing files, making it ideal for writing periodic log information to multiple files at once.

Here’s a great example:

ps | tee file1 file2 file3

That’s it! We’re sending the output of the ps command to three different files! Or as many as we want. As you can see in the screenshots below, all three files were created at the same time and they all contain the same data. This is extremely useful for constantly changing output, which you must preserve in multiple instances without typing the same commands over and over like a keyboard-loving monkey.

Now, if you wanted to append data to files, that is periodically update them, you would use the -a flag, like this:

ps | tee -a file1 file2 file3 file4

Sweet.