How to direct command line output to a file

[alias120]

Have you ever wished that you could save the output from the command line to a file for further examination? Well, here is how you do it! I am going to be using Windows 7 for my example.

-First, click on the start menu.

-Then, open up a new terminal window (search for it by typing cmd.exe in a directory search bar).

-Alright, so we will use ipconfig for our example (displays your computers network config)

-Navigate to whatever directory you would like the text file to appear in.
 
-Type in the following command:

Code: [Select]

ipconfig/all > Test.txt
-Press Enter.

-Notice the ">" character after the ipconfig switch. What that character is essentially
doing is directing the output that would normally appear in the terminal to whatever
destination you specify after the character.
 
-I chose a test file called Test.txt as the target of my output.

-Navigate to whatever directory you saved the file in, and open up the file.

-Voila! Terminal output has been directed to the specified text file!

[gbertoli3]

Wow, I had no idea. I'm definitely going to try this out. Do you know what the default directory is for saving files?

[alias120]

Under Windows 7 it will default you into your Users folder. So you would see something like this:

 C:\Users\Matthew>

Except with you name of course. I forgot what it was under Windows XP

[no2pencil]

The default directory is going to be whatever directory you are launching the command from. Unless you supply the full path is will be the current directory.