The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7
IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, 2016 Edition
Copyright © 2001-2016 The IEEE and The Open Group

#### NAME

> tee - duplicate standard input

#### SYNOPSIS

> ``tee` [`-ai`] [file`...`]`

#### DESCRIPTION

> The tee utility shall copy standard input to standard output, making a copy in zero or more files. The tee utility shall not buffer output.

> If the -a option is not specified, output files shall be written (see File Read, Write, and Creation.

#### OPTIONS

> The tee utility shall conform to XBD Utility Syntax Guidelines .

> The following options shall be supported:

> -a
>   Append the output to the files.
> -i
>   Ignore the SIGINT signal.

#### OPERANDS

> The following operands shall be supported:

> file
>   A pathname of an output file. If a file operand is `'-'`, it shall refer to a file named -; implementations shall not treat it as meaning standard output. Processing of at least 13 file operands shall be supported.

#### STDIN

> The standard input can be of any type.

#### INPUT FILES

> None.

#### ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

> The following environment variables shall affect the execution of tee:

> LANG
>   Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. (See XBD Internationalization Variables for the precedence of internationalization variables used to determine the values of locale categories.)
> LC_ALL
>   If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization variables.
> LC_CTYPE
>   Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).
> LC_MESSAGES
>   Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error.
> NLSPATH
>   [XSI] Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.

#### ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS

> Default, except that if the -i option was specified, SIGINT shall be ignored.

#### STDOUT

> The standard output shall be a copy of the standard input.

#### STDERR

> The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

#### OUTPUT FILES

> If any file operands are specified, the standard input shall be copied to each named file.

#### EXTENDED DESCRIPTION

> None.

#### EXIT STATUS

> The following exit values shall be returned:

> 0
>   The standard input was successfully copied to all output files.
> >0
>   An error occurred.

#### CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS

> If a write to any successfully opened file operand fails, writes to other successfully opened file operands and standard output shall continue, but the exit status shall be non-zero. Otherwise, the default actions specified in Utility Description Defaults apply.

The following sections are informative.

#### APPLICATION USAGE

> The tee utility is usually used in a pipeline, to make a copy of the output of some utility.

> The file operand is technically optional, but tee is no more useful than cat when none is specified.

#### EXAMPLES

> Save an unsorted intermediate form of the data in a pipeline:

>     ... | tee unsorted | sort > sorted

#### RATIONALE

> The buffering requirement means that tee is not allowed to use ISO C standard fully buffered or line-buffered writes. It does not mean that tee has to do 1-byte reads followed by 1-byte writes.

> It should be noted that early versions of BSD ignore any invalid options and accept a single `'-'` as an alternative to -i. They also print a message if unable to open a file:

>     "tee: cannot access %s\n", <pathname>

> Historical implementations ignore write errors. This is explicitly not permitted by this volume of POSIX.1-2008.

> Some historical implementations use O_APPEND when providing append mode; others use the lseek() function to seek to the end-of-file after opening the file without O_APPEND. This volume of POSIX.1-2008 requires functionality equivalent to using O_APPEND; see File Read, Write, and Creation.

#### FUTURE DIRECTIONS

> None.

#### SEE ALSO

> Introduction, cat

> XBD Environment Variables, Utility Syntax Guidelines

> XSH lseek

#### CHANGE HISTORY

> First released in Issue 2.

#### Issue 6

> IEEE PASC Interpretation 1003.2 #168 is applied.

#### Issue 7

> Austin Group Interpretation 1003.1-2001 #092 is applied.

> SD5-XCU-ERN-97 is applied, updating the SYNOPSIS.

End of informative text.

return to top of page

UNIX ® is a registered Trademark of The Open Group.
POSIX ® is a registered Trademark of The IEEE.
Copyright © 2001-2016 The IEEE and The Open Group, All Rights Reserved
[ Main Index | XBD | XSH | XCU | XRAT ]